Life can be exhausting. Certainly this year, 2020, has been exhausting. Between COVID-19 and the election in the U.S. and the strain it put on the national dialogue and personal relationships, who can’t wait for 2020 to be over? More generally, you may have been through a professional or personal crisis. You have been fired or lost your business. You may have lost a loved one, or someone you love may be battling an illness. When you feel the bottom of your crucible seems to never end, how do you keep going? How do you find the strength to keep going when there seems to be no end in sight?
Here’s a seven-step roadmap to help you move past your crucible fatigue:
1. Take One Small Step
With life feeling so overwhelming, what one small step can you take today that is a positive step forward? No matter how small, think of something that will be beneficial.
2. Don’t Forget Your Vision
As you are taking one small step at a time, don’t forget the vision you are moving toward. That is key. Each step must take you one small step toward achieving your goal. Whether it is professional or personal. If you have been fired, you might take this as an opportunity to reflect on what direction you want to go in life. Maybe you want to change careers. So today you might start journaling about what you want in life and your career. And don’t forget: Reflection should precede action. Before you go out seeking a new job, reflect and journal first. One small step. For a personal challenge, it might be different. In the case of loss of a loved one, for instance, what can you do today that you would enjoy? Maybe it is a walk with a friend, reminiscing about the joy you had being with your loved one. Maybe it is doing something you enjoy that is about making you a little bit happy even for a moment. Yes, there is the grieving process, but think of one thing you can do today that will be positive and helpful to you.
3. Celebrate Each Small Step
As you take a positive step forward, no matter how small celebrate it. It is a win. Each step is a win. Remember one small win at a time adds up to a bigger win. When you look back and see several days of small wins, it begins to create momentum that can move you past your fatigue. As you look back at several weeks or several months, you will see how far you have come. Perhaps you are becoming a different person; you have evolved in a positive way.
4. Learn Through Your Crucible
As you begin to take positive small steps forward and celebrate them, reflect on what you might learn from this crucible time. If you were fired, perhaps there were reasons. Perhaps there are some insights you might be able to apply to your next job. You might have thought you knew all the answers. You were the expert and so you didn’t need to listen. How you will you learn from this experience? What will you do differently next time? History does tend to repeat itself. What part of your history do you not want to repeat? For a personal crucible the learning may be different. Perhaps you might learn that you are stronger than you thought you were. Even though the personal loss is devastating, you are more resilient than you knew. Perhaps it might make you take stock and reflect on what is really important to you in life as you move forward.
5. Cultivate an Attitude of Hope
Even though you are tired and worn out, as you take one small step at a time, try to be hopeful and optimistic. We are often what we believe. Think of how tomorrow could be better than today. Think of the positive steps we can take. This is not naive hopefulness, but a decision of the will to think positively. Thinking negatively will only bring you down. Why go there?
6. Have a Cheerleading Squad
It might feel a bit hokey to have friends who are cheering you on saying, “You’re awesome! You’re wonderful! You can do it!” But as cheesy as it might sound, it does work. These are friends who genuinely believe in what they are saying. When you get down, such friends pick you up and keep you moving forward. When you have made a small win, they are there to celebrate with you; and importantly to remind you that you have achieved a small win and that you need to celebrate.
7. Have an Attitude of Gratitude
It may be a cliche, but having a grateful heart and a grateful attitude fills your heart and soul with positive energy. Complaining and whining, however understandable, does not serve you. Why wouldn’t you want to pick the path that serves you and fuels you? Pick the grateful path. Reflect on the blessings you have. It could be your spouse or partner, or your kids. Perhaps it is friends. Perhaps it is the achievements you have made or the people you have helped; or the people who have helped you. Be grateful for these opportunities. When you have a grateful heart, the world does not seem so bad. It will give you more energy to take the next step.
Coming out of a dark place, a challenging crucible, is not easy. The road may not be short. But the road to coming back from your crucible, even to lessening the sense of fatigue and hopelessness, begins with ONE SMALL STEP. Each small positive step builds on the next. Pretty soon you will have a flywheel of positive small steps. Perhaps some of your cheerleading team will be part of your team to help a budding vision you are having come to reality. A vision, be it small or large, is birthed out of one positive small step. What one positive small step will you take today that years from now you will look back and celebrate? This was the step that led me to where I am now.
Reflection
What one small positive step can you take today to begin moving beyond your crucible fatigue?
What will you do to celebrate it?
Is there a vision that is being birthed out of these positive small steps? If so, what is it?
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
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👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Her resume is wildly impressive: best-selling author, award-winning screenwriter, successful entrepreneur, celebrated fitness trainer and health activist — she even won Miss Congeniality at the Miss California USA pageant. But Kimberly Spencer’s accomplishments hid her demons — bulimia, trying to be who others wanted and expected her to be, a victim of emotional self-sabotage. When she realized she had the power to crown herself whole, she stopped breaking off pieces of her personal and professional selves to fit into others’ boxes. That revelation has led to a career as an internationally acclaimed speaker and high-performance coach who helps audiences and clients reassemble the diamonds within and build lives of joy and significance.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Kimberly S:
It's kind of like if you smashed a diamond, right? So you get to the point when you're forming this diamond, when you find it, it's this mucky dirty rock, and you got to have those cuts and those shapes and those things. But what happens when life, the drill, whatever, cracks that diamond and splits it to where that it's no longer this beautiful, perfect, shiny rock, but something happened where it like the laser broke it. Well, you still have a diamond, it just needs to be refined and cut. It needs to be perfected again.
Gary S:
Have you ever felt like that, like a diamond blown apart, that what you thought made you valuable was gone in an instant? If so, you'll find some encouragement and insight to discover your true value, your unique vision in today's episode. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the show and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership. And today our guest is Kimberly Spencer, an award-winning high-performance coach and trainer, Amazon bestselling co-author, international motivational speaker and the founder of crownyourself.com. Where she helps visionary leaders build their empire and stand out in their full potential in their bodies, in their businesses and in their relationships. Kimberly is proof of something we can't say enough here at Beyond the Crucible, that it's better to make your own mold than to conform to someone else's.
Warwick F:
Well, Kimberly, thanks so much. I'd love to talk here in a bit about what you do in helping people and women in particular, throw off limiting beliefs, just finding their own story and their own journey in Crown Yourself. But tell us a bit about yourself now. You're obviously from the US but you're not in the US right now, so tell folks where you are.
Kimberly S:
We are currently in the Gold Coast of Australia. My husband was appearing in the Gold Coast, ironically, with the cast of the Walking Dead for a convention back in March when the pandemic was starting. And we just decided if we're going to be on lockdown, we would prefer to have the beach as our backyard. So we rented an Airbnb and have been bebopping in Airbnbs ever since, which has been about seven months of a lot of fun and a lot of growth. And it's such a beautiful time. We could not have picked a better place and space for us to be. Things are opening back up then my son actually gets to go to pre-kinder where he can hug other children, because that kid is a hugger.
Warwick F:
Now, how many kids do you have?
Kimberly S:
Just him for right now.
Warwick F:
And he's how old?
Kimberly S:
Three.
Warwick F:
Three. Okay, wow. So this wasn't like a planned, permanent move to Australia. You were just kind of stuck there so to speak on the Gold Coast, which in Queensland sort of semi-tropical beaches, they're probably worse places to be stuck than the Gold Coast.
Gary S:
Yeah, that doesn't sound like being stuck to me.
Kimberly S:
Yeah, we call it stuck by choice when people ask, when you get stuck at it. We did have plane tickets back, but instead we put my parents on those plane tickets and said, we'll stay here, so.
Warwick F:
At some point, you are going to move back to the US.
Kimberly S:
Yeah, at some point, perhaps, but it's always been my husband and my vision to travel around the world and to have online businesses and to be able to work from wherever and specifically to be able to allow our children to be raised by experiences of different cultures, instead of just reading about them in a book. And that's something that's very important for me. And so this vision, it took a lot of faith and courage. And as I just said on another call earlier today, I said, trust really is my word for 2020 of just, it's kind of like bungee jumping. Like I've bungee jumped once before in my life, when I really felt a need to throw myself off a building, but I wanted to survive. So I said, hey, let's do bungee jumping. And there is this moment when you're bungee jumping and like, it takes the act of courage, like of leaping off of a platform to be able to then perilously plunge toward the ground.
Kimberly S:
And there's a moment of surrender and trust that, that rope is going to catch you. And when it does, it's the most freeing and yet supportive feeling I've ever had where suddenly you're flying through the air because you know you are fully 100% supported. But it took a plunge to get there in essence, where you didn't know if you were going to hit the cement and have a really bad accident or fly through the air with the greatest of ease and that's really what 2020 has felt like for me of like giant leaps of faith and of really learning to trust where certainty lives in my body and what certainty feels like.
Kimberly S:
And what I mean by certainty is like the world around us can like throw us curve balls obviously, thanks to 2020 we all know that. But with the curve balls, there is a certainty that you can cultivate through those experiences that I've spent my life cultivating. That is a certainty that no matter what happens, you can figure it out. When I felt like staying in the Gold Coast would be the best for me, the best for my husband, the best for my family, I said, let's stay here. Let's do this.
Kimberly S:
And I remember having a conversation with my husband. I said like, "Where are you on the decision scale?" Because for me, once I make a decision, there's no going back. Like that's like, but I have to be at 100%. That decision is made in my soul and in my gut and I know where it lives in my body. And I was talking to my husband, he said he was like 90% there. I said, "If you're not 100% then we go home." I said, "Because I can't be the only one who's certain, because this is, it's not just me who's staying. It's ..."
Warwick F:
Those are very wise words that have good marriage advice. Make sure you're both on the same page. You're both committed and be willing to give up, not like give up, but just, I don't know if the word is compromise, but just you give the other person the freedom to say yes, when you say, I really want to do this, but if you are not with this, then let's not do it. It actually increases the chance they'll say yes, ironically.
Kimberly S:
Yeah, and he wanted to do it, he just wasn't certain 100% because it was that act of faith. And then finally he took about an hour. He really sat with himself, he got quiet and he came back, he was like a 100%, let's stay.
Warwick F:
Life is an adventure. So you obviously live that, which is awesome. So let's go back a bit. And from what I understand, you grew up in Los Angeles area, San Fernando Valley, no less, which I guess, was valley girl or whatever came from that. I'm sure not everybody's like that because ...
Kimberly S:
Yes, I have worked hard to lose my valley girl accent.
Warwick F:
Oh, you probably never had one.
Kimberly S:
But it does flip out after a couple of glasses of wine.
Warwick F:
So tell us about growing up. I understand you, like a number of people, you had some challenges that made it a bit difficult to figure out who you were and self-sabotage. So talk a bit about some of that growing up, because I think that sets the scene of who you are now and what you're passionate about.
Kimberly S:
Yeah. It really did set the scene because I grew up with my dad who ... my parents are the most generous human beings. And yet they like everyone has their own demons and my dads was addiction. And so growing up with an addict and my mom was the quintessential co-dependent who really didn't want to deal with feelings because they were messy. So she would just, she had like what I call ostrich syndrome. She would just pop her head in the sand, everything's fine.
Kimberly S:
And for me, I think that we're blessed with the children that we need to highlight parts of us that we've kind of lost. I know that with my own journey into motherhood, my son has just blessed me with this unshakable compassion that I see an empathy that he has is just, is profound. And so I think I was blessed to my parents to remind them of feeling, and that there is safety and actually freedom in allowing yourself to process and go through all of the feelings and emotions and whatnot.
Kimberly S:
But it took me a long time to get to this point because I saw my dad, he would escape from his feelings of shame and guilt and anger and rage. And my mom would pretend like they didn't exist. I mean, when I was a kid, I was very emotional. It was a very emotional kid because injustice just bothered me to my core and hypocrisy specifically. And so when I would see hypocritical behavior in my parents, I would kind of feel this like rage of just like, I feel like I just wanted to shake them. Not only just because of the hypocrisy, but because I saw their potential.
Kimberly S:
That's always been something that I've been able to see in others that like many of my clients that I work with now, when they come out on the other side and they're like, "Oh my God, Kim, did you imagine that this was possible for me?" And I was like, "Yeah, I saw it from the beginning. Like there was no doubt in my mind that you could not achieve that." Like it's just, I see potential and I see possibility in everyone. So when I grew up, I had my dad who was the addict, but I also had the moments when he was sober. So I say that I grew up with four dads, which was great because it did teach me sensory acuity at a very young age-
Warwick F:
When you say four dads, how do you mean?
Kimberly S:
Yeah. So I grew up with the asshole alcoholic dad. The painkiller popping manic dad who would go on wild whirlwind shopping sprees and bring home tons of random crap. The stoner dad who was really laid back, just super supportive, just kind of just chill, would just hang out on the couch. And then the really cool sober dad who would take me to the park and was really, really, always supportive and taught me some of my greatest pieces of entrepreneurial advice, because even though my dad was an addict, he was able to build a multi-million dollar company through his addiction.
Kimberly S:
So I was like, if you could do that while drunk, like imagine what your potential, like just the untapped potential. And that's the thing that just makes me this such a warrior for possibility and a warrior for potential is when I see that potential, that's really being sabotaged by ourselves in many ways. That fear of really stepping into that unknown and into that all that you really could be. And it does come from having those feelings and being able to experience those emotions of fear and shame and guilt, and then moving into courage and then taking those acts of courage every single day.
Warwick F:
So how did that look like for you because I know, I understand that you had some periods of self-sabotage, maybe some, I don't know, if eating disorders the right word, but some obviously having a dad with no sense four personality types that you don't need to be a psychologist to know it's not good for kids. Which dad am I going to have? I mean, I don't have that kind of a parenting experience a little bit in terms of, who am I going to see now? So I have a little bit of understanding of that, not at the same level. But talk about how does self-sabotage look for you at the time?
Kimberly S:
Well, for me, my form of self-sabotage was not understanding what to do with all these big emotions. Like I saw my dad escape from them. I saw my mom suppress them and repress them and pretend like they didn't exist. And meanwhile, like there I was with all these feelings and I didn't have any way of processing them. And my way of processing them did become bulimia. If you think about it in a metaphorical standpoint, like I would shove all my feelings down and then I would explode. And that was the feeling and the pattern that I was used to for years growing up in my household.
Kimberly S:
It's like eventually, eventually the lid would come off. Eventually you can't escape from it, from your feelings forever. So eventually there would be a moment of like volcanic release. And that was just how I learned how to control that was in a way of binge-ing and purging, which is not obviously healthy. And the biggest belief that I struggled with was being enough because I thought maybe if I was smart enough, then my dad would stop drinking. Maybe if I was skinny enough, then my dad would change. Maybe if I was this, maybe if I was that. So it was always this constant fear of being enough when it was never my stuff to be enough or like, yeah.
Warwick F:
I mean, you obviously, have a lot of clients and friends who've probably been through similar circumstances. Do you feel that you see this pattern of when the people are broken around you somehow as a kid, you think, well, it's my fault. As crazy as that ... because how could it possibly be your fault? It's not your fault, but somehow I don't pretend to fully understand it, but you've seen that I imagine. Did you feel that in some weird sense that it was your fault which just sounds crazy?
Kimberly S:
It does sound crazy. And in doing the research for my book I stumbled upon this really interesting principle called the just world bias. And what I've seen from high achiever is, especially high achievers that instead of taking that more victim mindset where they blame everybody else outside of them, high achievers are very skilled specifically at putting themselves in that sort of villain standpoint, where they put themselves at fault and they take responsibility for things that aren't their responsibility, like other people and other people's feelings.
Kimberly S:
And what I found was this thing called the just world bias, which we all have. And we see it in the news nowadays with like when a woman gets raped, then people say, oh, she must have been asking for it or oh, she must've deserved it, or oh, it must've been her skirt or something ridiculous like that. And it's really our toddler brains have this like desire to be, for the world to be fair. I mean, I hear it with my son of like, oh, that's not fair. And I'm like, oh, so that's where it comes from?
Kimberly S:
Our toddlers have got, like and our subconscious minds are like toddlers. So when we are the victim of events, whether in childhood or in adulthood, and I've had both, that are unexplainable things and acts of human cruelty that aren't our fault, but that are this period where we can either hold onto it and hold on to like, what happened? That what happens with this just world bias is it's our belief that it is our fault, that we must've done something to deserve it. And especially with high achievers who are incredibly skilled at putting themselves at fault for things that aren't their fault, then it's like, just like when we hear those things of that woman getting raped or whatnot, and somebody says, oh, she must've deserved it because she must have had the skirt or whatever, but that's our brains doing the same thing to us because we're putting ourselves-
Warwick F:
And the crazy thing is people do say that.
Kimberly S:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
I would say more so in times past and more so in certain cultures, which it's hard to think how people don't say that, but they do say that certainly in times gone by and other places. There's this phrase, I understand you mention that, see if, I don't know if I'm accurately quoting it, but you felt broken and something about breaking off pieces of yourself to fit into other people's mold. I mean, that's a fascinating thought. Talk about what you mean by that about breaking off pieces to fit into other people's mold.
Kimberly S:
So, because I didn't feel enough, I felt like I had to conform to being what other people wanted and maybe that would be enough. So once I started to heal myself from bulimia, which I did with no psychological or medical intervention, I then realized that our, the deep stuff, like those beliefs around what we deserve our worth, our enough-ness, they'll merge into a different form if they're not dealt with in that original thing. So while I healed a lot of it with my body and I felt finally enough in my body at the age of 22, I was able to walk down, the moment that I walked down the Miss California pageant runway in front of a crowd of 5,000 in my bathing suit, I felt free.
Kimberly S:
I felt that was where I really crowned myself in essence, where I just, I stood on that stage and I felt like the body, I got this. Like my body, I built up the trust with my body again. I had really transformed my perceptions of my body. The problem was, is I had the three deep seated beliefs of worthiness, of enough-ness, of deserving, they then jumped forms into my relationships. And so in my romantic relationships, I would be very skilled at playing the part that I thought the other person needed to love me.
Warwick F:
It's almost like a sort of a marketing concept. What brand does that person want? I can be that brand. I can be that person who they'll like. I mean, it's, which may work in business, but it's certainly not a good idea in relationships.
Kimberly S:
And it doesn't work in your soul, like your heart, your gut, your soul knows when your BS-ing yourself. But that was also, I grew very skilled at that because just from my childhood experiences, I knew I would have to adapt my behavior for the alcoholic dad or adapt my behavior differently for the stoner dad, or like, I learned very quickly how to adapt my behavior, so I adapted in my relationships to the behavior that I thought my partners wanted.
Kimberly S:
So maybe they didn't want the silly side or like the ambitious side. So I would hide those parts of myself and it was suffocating. And it just got to the point where I remember it was two hours before I met my forever husband, and I was praying as I was driving to this networking event. And I was like, good Lord, I just want to be authentic and I want to travel. Those are the two things I wanted.
Warwick F:
That's a two interesting concepts, authenticity and travel.
Kimberly S:
Yeah. And so I remember when my husband sauntered up to me at the bar and he said, "Hi, my name is Spike." And I said, "Hi, my name is Kim." And he said, "Kim, I got one question for you." I said, "What's that?" And he said, "Are you single?" And I said, "Well." At the time I was in a relationship, but it was one of those, it's complicated relationships. It wasn't really going that well. And I said, "I guess you could say I'm in a, it's complicated." He said, "Great, at least I'm not barking up the wrong tree, let's grab a drink."
Kimberly S:
So we grabbed a drink and we started talking. And I remember there were moments where I had to summon the courage to keep that commitment that I had made just a couple hours earlier, where I knew that I could easily fall into default behavior of agreeing that, sure. I like '80s music. I don't like '80s music.
Gary S:
Oh, no. Oh, no.
Kimberly S:
Except Depeche Mode. I am a Depeche Mode, like I have converted to Depeche Mode, but-
Warwick F:
I have to say just really briefly. I was on somebody else's podcast and one of their questions was, what's your favorite '80s artists? And I must've given the right one because I said, "I can't really think of any, I'm not really an '80s person," so go figure. But-
Gary S:
I'm sorry, Kimberly, I cut you off in a very important point just because I'm an '80s music fan.
Kimberly S:
Great, it's all good.
Warwick F:
Which one of us gave the right answer? Anyway, go ahead. So you risk your future.
Kimberly S:
Gary was horrified, how could you not be into the '80s music?
Warwick F:
So there you are with your future husband and you're almost about to say I love '80s music.
Kimberly S:
Yeah. And I was almost about to say, just hide the fact that I'd been previously married because that was something I felt deep shame about running off with a Navy man and then getting divorced nine months later. I was incredibly ashamed about that. But I said, I remember the moment, it started with '80s music and then it just kind of spiraled out of there where I did everything that you're not supposed to do in a relationship where I just kind of baggage dumped.
Kimberly S:
I said, "Yeah, this is me. This is what I've done. This is what I'm really not proud of. This is how I grew up. This is what happened. You like what you see?" And he was ... my husband had gone through his own crucible with his ex-wife being unfaithful and untruthful, and he loved it, he loved the authenticity.
Warwick F:
See that, that's the sort of thing. I mean, I know we haven't really talked about it, faith perspective, but from my faith perspective, sometimes if you're honest with yourself and with the other person, the Lord honors that in some way. And if you would just put on the mask, Kimberly and figure out, okay, which Kimberly shall I pull out of which drawer, the funny, the extrovert, the smart, the ambitious, he might've said, you know what? Bye, not interested. I mean, who's to know, but it's possible, right?
Kimberly S:
Yeah. It's definitely possible. I think, because we know when we're BS-ing ourselves and other people feel it too. Like if you know, then what is the energy that you're putting out there into the world where people are just like, I don't know, there's something about you, but I don't know. I don't know what that is.
Warwick F:
So I'd love to hear what you're doing now, but just as we kind of transition, I mean, you've done a lot of things. I mean, while you were, maybe from a health and physical standpoint, you felt good, but you mentioned there were other sides, there was pieces you were still trying to figure out, but you weren't just sitting around. I mean, whether it's Ms. California and everybody's seen the movie Miss Congeniality, but you actually won that award, which just briefly tell folks what that is because I think of the movie and it's probably not quite that ... Tell us what that is.
Kimberly S:
So Miss Congeniality, I won it in the Miss Teenage California pageant and it's funny because I won it and I was so excited because it came with a scholarship and everything. And then I dropped out of college two weeks before I was supposed to start. So I didn't get to collect the scholarship, but it's basically for the friendliest person in the audience. And it was one I remember because pageants, I got into pageants when I was 15 and that was like right in the heyday of my eating disorder.
Kimberly S:
But part of my eating disorder was the fact that I didn't have peers around me that mirrored my ambition, that mirrored my drive and my desire to serve. I was running for class president and I remember I expected to like end at least hunger in Los Angeles within the year. So I have been unthinkably optimistic since forever and I always can find a silver lining in pretty much anything, including all my past experiences that I've been through. And I've been through some pretty gnarly ones. But the beautiful thing is that ... Oh Gary, did you have something to say?
Gary S:
I was going to say, to Warwick's point when he was talking about all the things that you've done. I mean, I read the intros to all the guests we have on the show and it was hard to breathe at some points because there's this-
Warwick F:
What?
Gary S:
There's so much stuff there and you didn't even put it all in your bio. You, for instance, some other things that people may not know about you, that you have on your website, that you co-wrote a hardcore, a motocross movie called Bro. And you have still have yet to ride a dirt bike. Your favorite color is glitter. Okay, we could have gleaned that a little bit. My favorite one that you have listed here, Kimberly and we've talked about this, you do your best writing while listening to movie scores from superhero films.
Gary S:
So I just want you to know that today I dressed for the occasion in my own, if you're watching it on YouTube, I have an iron man t-shirt on. And then I've got an enormous iron man pin on there as well. And you didn't even mention your experience with Shark Tank. So you've done all of these things. You pitched something on Shark Tank and-
Kimberly S:
Well, not on the ... I pitched something to the first round of Shark Tank auditions. So it was not like, I didn't actually pitch to the sharks. Our products got featured in Times Square and then the casting director actually for the Shark Tank auditions lived right down the street from my office, from my eCommerce company. And he'd seen the product and he was like, come in for the audition. And so I brought the product and I pitched it.
Kimberly S:
And I don't know what happened after that because a week, I think it was two weeks later, my partner said he wanted to buy me out, so that caused that split. And that was my own crucible in itself because that buyout was the first time I'd ever ... First of all, it was three months before my wedding. And so I was dealing for the first time in my life with lawyers and they don't send nice emails.
Warwick F:
No.
Gary S:
No.
Kimberly S:
They don't typically send lovely, loving, like emails that are full of support. It's just like, it was the first time I'd ever had my integrity called into check, or my capabilities called into question, or my background or my education experience. None of which was called into question when I first joined the company. So we ended up signing the buyout agreement three weeks before I got married and just because I didn't want to deal with lawyers on my honeymoon. And I came up with the idea for Crown Yourself actually when I was in Italy because I was wondering like, what the F am I going to be doing when I get back home? Because-
Warwick F:
And before you get to Crown Yourself, just to finish what Gary was saying, what's amazing is you mentioned that film, Bro. You had a Pilates studio, I think Fitness with Kim. You run four marathons. I mean my gosh, it exhausts me just thinking about-
Kimberly S:
Five.
Warwick F:
... running one. I mean it's ... You created, I guess the stretching device with Shark Tank. I mean, you were kind of going full throttle. I mean you were kind of going at it. But as you were going at it, you were probably, were you trying to figure out, okay, who am I and trying to be authentic and hence Crown Yourself was birthed out? So talk about Crown Yourself and how that linked to all of these things you were doing because you were driven and from the world's perspective you were succeeding. What's not to be proud of? I mean, what's the problem. You're going full throttle and doing incredible things.
Kimberly S:
Thank you.
Warwick F:
But yet, was there something missing as you were doing that or, I mean or ...
Kimberly S:
I think what was missing was alignment. It was alignment, but it was also, I always was allowing myself to follow my curiosity. So I thought for years that it was Hollywood, that it was screenwriting, that it was making movies, that it was becoming this producer and then I would have the income and the impact to be able to serve in the way that I wanted to serve. Well, that was A, a bit more challenging and B, soul sucking to be constantly cast in the role of hot girl number, whatever, where I was like, there's no meat to that story. There's like, that's just some like ditzy girl, that's this like it, I didn't like those roles.
Kimberly S:
I met my co-writing partner at a networking event. I was very entrepreneurial with my show biz endeavor. So I was like networking like a crazy person. And I understood to some degree like entrepreneurship is just building relationships. And so I cultivated relationships and he eventually came to me and he wanted me to produce this movie that he had no script. And I said, "Well, how about me?" And so I'd always been really good at making very audacious asks early on. And so I made the audacious ask, he said, "Great, write 10 pages of a scene, we'll pass it off to the executive producer."
Kimberly S:
I wrote 10 pages of three guys that walk into a strip club. I got the notes back with like, "How do you know what happens in men's minds?" And I was like, three guys in a strip club, ain't that hard? But so I wrote this thing that nobody expected. Like I love surprising people and doing things that nobody expects. And I also love transformative stories. So this movie was at least the opportunity that I could write a story about a young kid who's trying to fit in with the cool crowd.
Kimberly S:
So it wasn't about motocross, it was about acceptance. I understand that on an emotional level, because I had just gone through a breakup with the first boyfriend, the first love of my life. That was because he was trying to be accepted into this other crowd that I was like, whoa, that's not a crowd I want to hang with.
Warwick F:
As you were doing all these things, how did you get to a point where you found kind of the real Kimberly and you're able to be yourself? I mean, do all these fabulous things. You haven't stopped being adventurous. You haven't stopped being driven, which is great. But somehow I feel like what you're doing now, what you're teaching other people and other women to do is different. So talk about it because it feels nuanced, because on the outside it may look like, well Kimberly's life is not really that much different, but yet it is in some sense, isn't it?
Kimberly S:
It's different because I know what business I'm really in. And I mean, that is like my purpose. And no matter what form it took, whether it was screenwriting or being the president of an eCommerce company or my fitness, every single one of those businesses was the business of transforming people's stories because I had to transform my own. When I was transforming, I transformed people's stories through writing that film. Like when I was approached by the mother of this boy who saw the film and changed his life because of that film that I co-wrote, like that was amazing.
Kimberly S:
And when I heard that, I was like that, that is what I want, to transform people's stories because when I had that dream achieved, I was like, I was surprised. I've always had this very strong internal dialogue ever since I recovered from bulimia where I was surprised that I was only 90% fulfilled. I was like, this was a dream that I'd waited for a decade to manifest into reality. And suddenly it was there. And my name was on the big screen and it was a moment instead.
Kimberly S:
Two weeks later, when I hear from the mother of this boy who came to the premiere, that her son changed his life. That moment, I was like, that's what I want to do. And that was the same reason as to why I got into teaching Pilates as well, because I wanted to transform people's stories about their bodies because Pilates transformed my own story about my body.
Warwick F:
It's interesting as you say that because in Crucible Leadership we talk about, life's about living a life of significance, which we define as a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. And what we say a lot is nothing wrong with being successful, but success in of itself is not really satisfying. It's like, okay, you reached the top of the mountain. It's like, well, then what, right? Ants crawling up an anthill, you reach at the top and it's like, okay, well now what?
Warwick F:
There's nothing wrong with it, but when your perspective is, I'm here to serve others. I'm here to help that, talk with that mother and the boy who saw the movie, helping people in Pilates classes, that to me brings joy. We all want joy in life. We all want a joy filled life, a joy filled marriage, joy filled family. But when you're ... It feels like you're using your talents and your ability and your drive in the service of others. I mean, is that fair? I mean, do you feel like, as you're doing that, that is bringing you joy?
Kimberly S:
Oh, 100%. Like having been able to grow Crown Yourself and serve the people that I have been blessed with to serve through the community that I've built has been one of the greatest experiences. It took a ton of courage because after I was bought out of my company, I definitely had my doubts. I had my fears, I questioned everything because that's like, I'd had such fear. But after a year and a half, it was when I found out I was pregnant, that I was just like, I know that I'm meant to serve on such a bigger level than just teaching fitness or than just helping people with their back pain.
Kimberly S:
Like I want full on transformation. Like one of my clients, she texted me. She's like, Oh my gosh, her daughter finally got back in touch with her after years of distance. She'd gotten divorced from a crappy marriage. She'd moved into a beautiful home. She'd found alignment in her business. I was like that, that is what I live for, the fact that she was no longer living someone else's life of what someone said that she should be doing, and instead, actually in her 50s started leading the life that she always dreamed of living and fully living it. And that-
Warwick F:
There's an important point in what you're saying, Kimberly, that I want listeners to hear is there's nothing wrong with running a Pilates studio-
Kimberly S:
No.
Warwick F:
... and that's great. But for you, you felt like not a higher calling, but maybe for you, it felt like playing small. Not that it is playing small for everybody, but for Kimberly, it felt like there was another mission, another journey and you wanted to be faithful to it, in a bit like bungee jumping, you mentioned earlier, not being afraid to jump, right?
Kimberly S:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
And listeners really need to hear that is, don't settle. Don't settle for something you know, yeah, I'm doing fine, but there's more to life than doing fine. There might be a bigger mission. Something that is really calling you, beckoning you. Listen to that voice. Take that leap. Don't just settle. I think that's kind of what I'm hearing. And in your approach with Crown Yourself, I know there's three components, including eliminating negative self-talk and creating high-performance patterns, helping support change and growth. Talk about some of these elements. And certainly one of the keys, I think from what you've mentioned is eliminating that negative self-talk. Talk about why that's so foundational to changing your story, to crowning yourself in the best sense of that word.
Kimberly S:
Well, I think a lot of times beliefs are like wardrobes, but a lot of times we get stuck in the same outdated clothes that we don't realize are outdated until we recognize that they're not really fitting in with the rest of the surroundings or they don't look anything like how we want them, we think we look. And so, one of the things that it's less about, it is about eliminating the negative self-talk. But I think there's always going to be that voice of fear or doubt that just, it's there for our survival and making friends with it in a way of understanding that why it's there is really important. Because when we know that it's there for our survival, then we can see where it's trying to keep us small so that it thinks it's keeping us safe.
Warwick F:
Right.
Kimberly S:
And courage, acts of courage, it takes courage to sometimes just start by questioning it. There is power in our questions. And so as a coach, what I do is I just start asking people questions that they've never thought to question before. Questioning their beliefs. Questioning their habits. Questioning what they're doing and why they're doing what they're doing, and how they could maybe do it differently to then work back from the goal of who they want to become instead of working toward it from their perspective of where they are now.
Warwick F:
Right. Just understanding what are your beliefs. I'm sure you ask them, is this belief, is this emotion, is it serving you? I'm sure that's, you probably delve into that and just helping. You're right, I mean, primitive people, I mean, there was a reason for fear, the saber tooth tiger is coming and you got to run, climb a tree, run into a cave. I mean, there's a reason, they can serve you. But on the other hand, some of those negative emotions can bind you up and just stop you growing and moving. So you help folks unpackage that, is that kind of part of it?
Kimberly S:
Unpackage that, and also examine the stories that they're telling themselves. I'd question always very frequently, the big one that I question the stories of being busy, because life will expand to meet you where you choose to expand, but that means you need space to expand and grow. And if you're constantly telling yourself that you're the story of busy and I did this, so that's why I know it so personally like the story of such busy-ness, that I'm so busy, then there's no space for that expansion.
Warwick F:
There's no space to change or to grow.
Kimberly S:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
Like you can say, oh, I'm so busy. I'm running my Pilates studio and it's doing great. I don't have time to think about anything else. While that maybe wouldn't serve you and you obviously took a different path in which you took time, in some sense to examine what is that I want? Who am I? Where do I want to go? Some of those big questions.
Kimberly S:
Yeah. And when I started really looking at my schedule, I was like, I'm not that busy. Like I'm busy, but I'm not that busy. And am I busy doing the on-purpose things? Am I busy doing the things that really move the needle? And that's the key is so often we'll busy ourselves with things that we think we're supposed to be doing or should be doing, or that are the things that we ... like there's almost this like pride in how long your to do list is, with a lot of high achievers that I see kind of stay stuck.
Warwick F:
What you just said is so profound. I want listeners to get this. You said, "Are you busy with the things that are serving your purpose?" Or something to that effect. And I think 90% of people, they don't ask that question. I'm sure a lot of your clients that you chat to and talk to, it's like hmm, gee, I don't know.
Kimberly S:
I was really blessed to learn that lesson early.
Gary S:
This is a great time to do what I like to say, talk about landing the plane. I heard the captain, the little bell that goes off and the plane. He's asked us to fasten our seat belts because that was a very excellent point. And I've been wanting to ask you this, the entire time that we've been together here Kimberly, because what you've just described, what Warwick has framed up for listeners as well, is that your life from the outside looking in, people who would have known you before you were living as joyfully as you are now. May look at you and say, well, it's not that different. Kimberly's still working hard and working fast and her to-do list is long.
Gary S:
And there's one thing that you wrote about a nickname your husband has for you that I think is fascinating because I think what it says, it says something very instructive to listeners. You say your husband calls you honeybee because you're always buzzing around. And I want listeners to hear that because Kimberly is still extremely busy. She's still working hard. She's still focused on things, but she's focused by her words on the right things. She's focused on the things that bring her joy, the things that her passions really ignite, the things that help other people that on purpose look to help other people.
Gary S:
And you listener in your crucible experience, as you bounce back, you don't have to do a 180 from what you're doing, right? You certainly haven't done a 180 from the outside looking in, you've got an emotional 180, but in terms of the way you apply yourself, that's the same. And I think that's important for listeners to realize you don't have to reinvent every aspect of yourself. You have to reorient yourself. Is that fair?
Kimberly S:
Very much so. It's like the metaphor of the plane, where if you're flying from New York to Los Angeles, it's those constant checking ins of are you one degree off course? Because one degree off course could land you in San Francisco or Baja, California. So it's those constant check-ins of alignment. Of questioning, is this the highest and best service that I can be doing right now? Like, and I asked that too this morning.
Kimberly S:
I looked at the meetings that I had today, the podcast interviews that I had today, is this the best and highest service that I can be doing right now? Is this me operating in my genius zone? Yes. And I've seen a direct correlation between people's income and the amount of time that they're spending operating in their genius zone rather than busying themselves with all the tasks and all the things and all the stuff that they could be busy with.
Warwick F:
And what you just said again is so profound, is that you tend to think, oh, to be successful I have to put on a certain mask and be a certain person. But we live in light of who we truly are, and we live our authentic selves, all things being equal, you actually might be more successful is counter-intuitive, but it's not, authenticity is not against success. It can be in line with it. There's one, maybe last thing that I'm fascinated by that I heard you say that, when you work with folks you're not focusing on how they're broken, but how they're well.
Warwick F:
And yes, counseling, dealing with some of those negative things are important, but you don't want to just wallow, not wallow, but deal with that. But just, there are parts of us that are actually not broken. They're diamonds or gems. They're parts of us that a beautiful. That's a very different way of thinking, that sometimes even when we're broken, there are parts that are beautiful and well, so what do you mean by that?
Kimberly S:
It's kind of like if you smashed a diamond, right? So you get to the point when you're forming this diamond and when you first find it, it's this mucky dirty rock. And you've got to have those cuts and those shapes and those things. But what happens when life, the drill, whatever, cracks that diamond and splits it to where that it's no longer this beautiful, perfect, shiny rock, but something happened where it like the laser broke it. Well, you still have a diamond, it just needs to be refined and cut. It needs to be perfected again.
Kimberly S:
And so what I constantly tell my community is you're both perfect right now, no matter what you're going through and you can also be perfecting. So it's not an either or scenario, it is an and which is the great paradox for our brains to kind of wrap our heads around that you can both be perfect and enough as you are and can keep growing and can keep perfecting and can keep growing your skillset and can keep improving.
Kimberly S:
And so I see that potential for growth while also seeing them perfect in the moment of whatever it is that they're going through that is true for them. As we work on transforming their perspective around what they are experiencing to see how could they look at that differently so that they could find those growth opportunities and thus sharpen and reform that diamond to be just as beautiful and sparkling as it was, and maybe even better.
Gary S:
I've been in the communications business long enough to know when someone says something like that and there are people listening in, they want to know, how do I get in touch with the person who just said that very profound thing. So Kimberly, how can our listeners find out more about you and Crown Yourself?
Kimberly S:
It's simple. You can go to crownyourself.com. When you hop on my website, you can download my free, You Are Worthy hypnosis, which is a deep subconscious reprogramming to start working on those deeper beliefs of worthiness, enough-ness and deserving. And you can always connect with me on Instagram at kimberly.spencer. Hit me up in the DMs if you love this episode, please take a screenshot of it. I love seeing and responding and being in communication with you. And you can also join our Crown Yourself Facebook community, which is pretty straightforward. It's just search for Crown Yourself and you'll find it.
Gary S:
I found it today, in fact I joined, so.
Kimberly S:
Yay! Awesome, I love having kings as part of the community.
Gary S:
I will see more of you there. Warwick, the plane has landed, but we're still getting up and collecting our bags. So you get one more question that you can ask Kimberly.
Warwick F:
No, I mean just an observation. I love that phrase we're perfect and perfecting. Just the concept you mentioned that we can be successful and authentic. We can be successful and really not trying to be somebody else, but we can just be who we truly are. So it sounds like you're helping others both to be successful, but be comfortable in their own skins, be comfortable with who they are and not as somebody else once said, not faking fine, pretending to be somebody else. But yeah, that phrase, perfect and perfecting, that's I mean, again, I hate to use the P word again. That's very profound. So I love that concept.
Kimberly S:
I love Ps. We got power, princess, it all fits in.
Warwick F:
Well said.
Gary S:
Well, that is the sound of people getting off the plane. So thank you, Kimberly. And for listeners, I want to wrap up with three takeaways from this conversation with Kimberly Spencer that I think will help us all as we look to move beyond our crucibles. The first point would be to remember this, life will throw you curve balls. We call them crucibles here at Crucible Leadership and Beyond the Crucible. But those curve balls cannot just be survived. They can be hit out of the park to continue the baseball metaphor. You can grow and thrive by digging into your faith and your confidence and your tribe, leaning on them. You can set a straight course to a better life, no matter how bendy the circumstances might seem at the time.
Gary S:
Point number two, succinctly put by Kimberly. BS is bad, to yourself and to others. Honesty, transparency, authenticity, lean into these things, manifest those things in all of your relationships. It may be uncomfortable to share your truth. Kimberly gave examples of that. It was very uncomfortable for her in certain times in her life, truly uncomfortable to share her truth, but she did it. Not everyone will applaud you when you do share your truth. But life on the other side of you doing that, of being authentic, of being truthful, of being who you are, life on the other side is worth well, the BS. You have to go through to get there.
Gary S:
And then the third point listener that you can take away from this is, never settled, but strive. If you feel like you've been created for more, if you like what you've done, but you want to love what you do, take it to the next level, take the leap. It takes courage to pursue your vision and passion. Kimberly downloaded kilograms of courage in our interview today. She's found joy by seeking something that helped others. You can find joy in that too. A key way to getting there, as Kimberly said toward the end of our conversation, I love this phrase. A key way to getting there to that joy is operating in your genius.
Gary S:
So listener, until the next time we're together on Beyond the Crucible, thank you for spending time with us. Thank you for digging in to learn how you can learn the lessons of your setbacks and failures and build a better life, a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others. We have a favor, Warwick and I do. If you liked what you heard today with Kimberly, if you've liked what you've heard in the past on the podcast, we encourage you to hit subscribe on the app on which you're listening right now so you'll never miss another episode. We have a new one every week, every Tuesday, we'll drop a new episode. So click subscribe, you'll never be surprised when a new one comes out.
Gary S:
And remember, as we part company here that your crucible experiences are painful. They're tough. They're curve balls, but they're survivable. More than that, I'll make up a word here, they're thrivable. If you learn the lessons of your crucible, if you apply yourself to that, you bring your passion and your vision to the table, it's not the end of your story by far. In fact, it can be the beginning of a new story in your life, a new chapter in your life that can be the most rewarding of all, because it leads to a life of significance.
She baked her first batch of cookies in the California sun at age 3 — with mud as the secret ingredient. Ever since that day, Whitney Singletary-White has dreamed of being a baker, and she’s made that dream come true with her gourmet Nuttin’ Butter Cookies. She sells the exotic nut-butter confections from her driveway these days, rising above the crucible of the COVID-19 pandemic with the same kind of grit that saw her fight back from a brutal assault that almost cost her much more than her business. Her motivation through it all? Building a life of significance with her two boys.
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👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible, I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Whitney S:
Help comes in the most unexpected places when you least expect it. At that moment when you feel that you really can't go on, there is always going to be that one person that you wouldn't expect to do it, will reach out and help you. And I find that you can't really fail if you don't keep trying because once you give up, you failed, you're done, that's over. But as long as you're like, I can still make it, you can still get that little bit in there, you can still push through just enough. It's hard, it hurts, but once you get past that moment, you can sit back and go, I made it. I overcomed that. I'm no longer feeling that pain anymore. I'm finally where I need to be. You get yourself out of it. We got to pull ourselves out of the mud sometimes.
Gary S:
Indeed, we do. And the woman who just spoke those words has had to pull herself up out of the mud more than a few times as she's pursued her dreams which began, which were birthed in her at age three. And she tells us about each struggle and most importantly about each triumph along that journey on today's episode.
Gary S:
Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. And today's guest is Whitney Singletary White, who is the founder and owner of a fabulous gourmet cookie company in California called Nuttin' Butter Cookies and you'll find out why they're called that as the episode progresses.
Gary S:
And as you'll discover as the episode progresses, nobody can explain Whitney's passion, Whitney's experiences and Whitney's triumphs better than she can with more insight and heart. So I'm going to stop trying and I'm simply going to read by way of introduction the introduction that she provided to Warwick and I for today's episode. And that is this.
Gary S:
My name is Whitney Singletary White. A California native, a newlywed with two sons, a baker with over 20 years experience, founder and owner of a specialty gourmet nut-based cookie shop located in Berkeley, California, established in March 2015.
Warwick F:
Well, Whitney it is so wonderful to have you. I just loved reading a bit about you. You've had a couple of articles and some different things in the San Francisco Bay area so it's super exciting. I have to confess, I have three kids in their 20s and they all know I definitely am a big cookie fan. So just reading about all the different varieties of cookies and every nut I think I've ever heard of, pretty impressive so. It's just so awesome. But before we get a bit into your story and some of the challenges, I'd love to hear a bit about Whitney and just who you are, how you grew up, family, just a little bit about sort of the back story of Whitney Singletary.
Whitney S:
Well, I grew up in Bakersfield, California. And if you know anything about California, Bakersfield is one of those places you want to pass right through and not live in. It's part of the fact it was always so hot. We have all the seasons, but summer is just never ending for some reason and it's just the hottest. But I loved growing up there as a child, it was peaceful, you can leave your doors unlocked, you can walk outside at night barefoot. You wouldn't do it during the day, you'd burn your feet. But it was just one of those things that that's how I grew up.
Whitney S:
I grew up with my mom, she was a single mom. Had me and my little sister and my grandpa was always hands on and my grandma she was kind of there, but she was one of those don't cross her because she'll throw a knife at somebody. I had a nice childhood. It wasn't a lot of chaos and drama and extra going on, it was just I grew up with a family that was bakers and chefs and cooks like my grandpa. He was in World War II and he used to be a cook. And he ended up getting out of the military with a purple heart and he went into business for his self being a chef.
Whitney S:
And my love for being in the kitchen was one of those things like oh, I want to try this, I want to taste this. So it was always in the mix of everybody making anything. I want to know what it is and I want to taste it first and can I help.
Warwick F:
So you really grew up in a family of chefs and bakers and I guess baking is... I know it goes back many generations, but it's literally in your blood. So talk about maybe some of the memories you have of, I don't know, baking with your mom or grandparents or was baking just part of what you did as a family and stuff?
Whitney S:
It was, it's during holiday times we used to do that. My grandpa, he's southern so he was always used to have a bowl of nuts in the shell. And they sold nuts out of the shell, but he liked the old school ones you have to work for it. He says, "It's not good unless you work for it." And I'm like, why can't you just buy them in the can? But I remember sitting around cracking nuts with him. He would take his hands and just crack walnuts. I'm like, gosh, grandpa, use a nutcracker.
Warwick F:
Yeah, who needs a nutcracker when you got grandpa?
Whitney S:
Yeah. So I remember growing up eating his mixed nuts and we would eat cookies and those are my two favorite things. I love cookies, I know. A lot of people want to hear baked goods, they're like, cakes and pies. I'm like, yeah, I can make those, but cookies are my favorite. And nuts are my favorite so naturally it's like I grew up and put them both together. It was just a no brainer, but I remember this one time when I was... I don't remember it, but I remember my mom constantly reminding me of this story when I was three years old I had wanted to play in the kitchen.
Whitney S:
And she was like no, get out of my kitchen, we're not having that. You're not suppose to make a mess with my kitchen. But she didn't say I couldn't bake. So I took all the ingredients out of the kitchen, took them outside to the front yard and I'm mixing the flour and the eggs and the butter with mud.
Gary S:
Hang on a second so that listeners heard that. You were mixing all the ingredients for cookies with what?
Whitney S:
Mud.
Gary S:
Okay, I just wanted to make sure they heard that.
Whitney S:
Yes. Mud from the front yard, right by my grandpa's rose bushes. I remember getting this mud and mixing it all together. Had a nice little bowl and I took the cookies, put them on a cookie sheet and laid them out in this Bakersfield's sun. Within minutes, the heat had cooked them. They were cooked. And my grandpa, he saw me making them. He goes, "What are you making?" I said, "I'm making cookies." And he goes, "Aw." And I said, "Would you like one?" And he says, "Oh sure, I'll try one." And my grandpa being who he was took a real bite out of the cookie and he's chewing this cookie and he says to me, "This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't have the dirt in it."
Whitney S:
And so my mom's standing to the side and she's like, "You know she put dirt in these cookies." He's like, "Yeah, it's just dirt, it's not going to hurt you." But that's the grandpa I grew up with. He was always, "Aw, you want to draw on the walls, that's okay, here's some paint. I'll fix that wall later." He was that grandpa.
Warwick F:
Sounds like an amazing guy, an amazing grandpa.
Whitney S:
He was.
Warwick F:
Did your friends say, gee, how come every grandpa can't be like yours kind of deal?
Whitney S:
Yes, everybody was like, Uncle Lee, this... he was always... his nickname was Uncle Lee because he had 18 brothers and sisters so he was an uncle to a lot of people.
Warwick F:
Okay, wow.
Whitney S:
But some of them who weren't actually his relatives would still call him Uncle Lee out of respect and he was always, "If I can help you with this, I can help you. Don't worry about it. I got you." And he was always that person. And I remember when I was little going to his barbecue restaurant that he had after school and I would be there helping him out, sweeping, and helping around and we used to joke about... because I used to like to make the baked goods. He never had dessert. He just had the meats and sides, but we never had dessert. I never understood why we never had dessert. Why is there no peach cobbler in here when everybody can make it in the family? I don't get it.
Whitney S:
And he said, "Well, one day when you get bigger, you can make all the desserts for us." And that was one of the things we had always talked about, but he end up dying before that ever happened. And so it was always something that I always wanted to do to be in that business with him. And years went by and I always have that moment and I was, "I'm going to wait until the right time and when that time comes, then I'm going to do this." And I just waited and waited and waited until the right time would come and the right time was never happening. It was always some type of something that will intervene. Then I would say, "Okay, no, not right now. No, not right now."
Whitney S:
Until I got to a point when I started the company where I would say, you know what? Today is the day. I literally woke up and said, "I no longer want to clean houses anymore," because I used to have a house cleaning company. And I said, "I no longer want to do that. That just pays the bills, it's not fun, I don't like doing it, but it pays the bills." And I said, "I want to do what I said I wanted to do almost 20 years ago." And I woke up and said, "cookies." And I went on the computer and I said, "Not just any cookies, what are people not making is what I wanted to make," because you can go anywhere to get a baked good, but what would make people come to me and just me only?
Whitney S:
And I said, "Let's see what they're not doing." And I went on the computer and I found everything that you can possibly think of and I said, "Everybody makes snickerdoodles and chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin and I said, "I don't want that." I said, "I know it was risky starting a company that didn't make any traditional cookies." And I said, "The people out there who think like I do who'll say I want to try something different, I want to go to a spot where I can have something new." For those people who can't bake and they want to be able to experience something besides a regular chocolate chip cookie is like they come here. And when I first started, I only had six nuts and from there all the way to 12 nuts now. And it's like I just found two more nuts to add to the line.
Warwick F:
Oh really?
Whitney S:
I thought I had all the nuts, I found two more.
Warwick F:
Are you able to tell us like a-
Whitney S:
Yes, the pili nut, it's a pili nut, a P-I-L-I nut. I have never heard of it, but the company that sends me stuff, where I get my nut supply from, they said, "Hey, we have these new nuts, would you be interested in trying?" And I said, "More nuts?" Sure.
Gary S:
My product line expands.
Whitney S:
I said, "Sure." I tried that nut and the pili nut has this texture like a pine nut, but a flavor like a macadamia. And so I mixed that one with butterscotch and so it just has this, what, moment to it but your mind just goes like this. People are looking for adventurous foods that are outside of the box. I'm the spot. I'm the bizarre food world of cookies.
Warwick F:
That is amazing.
Whitney S:
And then the second one is a baru nut, a B-A-R-U nut and that one I was like it looks so alien and so all nuts kind of look weird all ready, but this one just has just what is it look. And when you're eating it, it's like for me I'm like I'm eating this nut and it has this texture like a almond, but when you're tasting it it taste like a peanut. But not like a strong peanut, so I said I love stuff that's trippy like that. So that one I add a little bit of molasses to it so it's kind of like a gingersnap without the ginger.
Warwick F:
Wow, so how long has it been that you've started Nuttin' Butter, when did that start?
Whitney S:
It first started back in March of 2015.
Warwick F:
Right, right and so wow, so you had this idea for nuts and started it and-
Whitney S:
The idea of creating it was in 2014.
Warwick F:
Okay.
Whitney S:
I was stewing on it and now it's just that's the moment when I was realizing that this is what I want to do. What else do I want to do with my life besides this? Baking makes me happy. People who eat baked goods are happy. That's what I want in my life right now and then the following year was just one of those okay, I'm doing it now.
Warwick F:
So some people have ideas and they have dreams, but sadly most people, they don't do a whole lot with that. They think about it, wouldn't it be fun if, but what led you to go from hey this'll be a fun idea to I'm doing it? Because so many people don't do that. What led you to say you know what, we're going all in, let's do it? What led you to do that?
Whitney S:
I feel like sometimes you just have to jump into the deep end of the pool and figure it out. And for me, I said I can not go another day without having ever tried doing it. I know it's always something I wanted to do, can I really make a profession of it, do I really want to make a profession out of it? Do I? And I said but I'm never going to be able to answer any of these questions until I actually do it. And so I said I'm doing. Even if I fail two weeks later, I can say I did it and it just didn't work. I just couldn't live with myself because I'm a perfectionist too. So I said part of me is like I critique myself and I said, you can't say you tried everything and did everything that you wanted to do in your life and you haven't even did the thing you're passionate about yet.
Whitney S:
And so that's what made me say I need to do it. I don't care what no one thinks, I don't care how much it's going to cost me, I'm doing it.
Warwick F:
That's an amazing attitude that people could really learn from because so few people, they don't do what they're passionate about. Were there any echos of your grandfather or your mom, were any of them sort of this go for it mentality, do what you love?
Whitney S:
Yeah, my mom, she actually owns her own business since the '90s where she makes clothing accessories and afro-centric multi-cultural jewelry, ponchos, purses, et cetera. And I remember she used to do a lot of vending for festivals like jazz festivals and music festivals, food festivals. And being there as a child helping her with the sales and interacting with the customers just like that, that was fun for me. And so growing up into that and then her having her own business. And my grandpa, him being a chef and everyone all seem to have that entrepreneur vibe and even my great-great-grandmother used to have her big old giant cauldron that she used to sell mustard greens and collard greens on the side of the road when she first got freed.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Whitney S:
And that's how she made her money. That comes in the family, so being able to just jump out and just start something. Some of the family members are like, I don't know. Then it's other ones in the family, they're like, let's do it. We're kind of divided.
Warwick F:
That's an amazing business and we want to get to some of the challenges and obviously as a cookie fan I love all the fun varieties. I'm just looking at an article, almond, walnut, pecan, pistachio, hazel nut, brazil nut, pine nut, sesame seeds, wow! So that's amazing. You live in Berkeley, California, is it?
Whitney S:
Yes.
Warwick F:
And so I understand you have asthma, so you're in this apartment building and there's some people that are smoking and you said to the landlord, "Hey, you're not meant to smoke in this place, can we just not do the smoking because"... but somehow that seemed like a very reasonable request, but somehow that didn't seem to turn out so well. So tell folks what happened when you told the landlord, "I believe this whole smoking thing is not helping me."
Gary S:
And before you tell this story, Whitney, I want to just reveal one detail about your life that you told me when we talked earlier. Because it helps inform the real emotional and physical toughness you demonstrated through this process. You told me, I want to make sure I get it right. "I played hockey back in the day." That's what you told me. So that's an important context for listeners truly to hear as you tell this story of how you responded to the things that happened just from smoking going on in your building when smoking wasn't supposed to go on and the way that your neighbors treated it. You had a mental and emotional and physical toughness that allowed you to get through what you're about to tell us.
Whitney S:
Well, I can definitely say yeah, the hockey, I was a tomboy, so hockey, football, I was in there. We was boxing. I played dolls too, but I was really rough as a child. My sons are no where as rough as I was. But so moving into this property, it was one of those things where as a person who has asthma, I wanted to be in a smoke-free environment. Someone who has two young children that are a greater risk of developing it by being exposed to things, I wanted to reduce their risk.
Whitney S:
And so the place that I was living in only had one, two people sometimes smoking, which was too much for me because they was doing it right by my window. And so when I moved into this new place, I was assured that there's no smoking, they had signs that said no smoking. I went by a couple of random times and I didn't smell any smoke, I didn't see any evidence of smoke, so I'm like yes, this is a good fit. I get there and soon as the lease is signed, the whole dynamic of the building switched. It was like the people, there was no people hanging out, now there's people hanging out.
Whitney S:
There was no smoking, now they're smoking every day. What is this? I felt bamboozled, like it was a whole con. And when I get there I'm like okay, well, we have a front part of the property and a driveway, sometimes they have barbecues and get-to-gethers in the driveway, they call it their backyard. I had a backyard, that's not a backyard, that's a driveway. So when I asked for my simple request, I asked the one who was smoking by my window, "Do you mind smoking in the back," since the smoked there anyways, I didn't think it would be inconveniencing them. And I told them because the smoke is coming into my window and it's bothering me and my children, do you mind doing that?
Whitney S:
And they're like, "Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure, no worries." And then as I walked away I hear, "[laughing], we do what we want to do." I was like, oh, so that's how it's going to be in this building. Okay. So let me go ahead give the landlord the benefit of the doubt, let him know that you have a tenant that's smoking by my window. I asked them could they move, maybe you can ask them to not stand by my window because smoke travels up and I'm upstairs. Simple. And they never got in trouble, they never got any fines even though the city of Berkeley prohibits smoking in common areas and inside residential property. So it's against the law to do it, however, they continued to do it and the landlord never did anything about it.
Whitney S:
So my mind is I still to this day don't understand the point in wanting to attack me because I complained about their smoking when they never got any trouble. It's not like it was a retaliation because they lost their job or their housing or they got a fine, it was just because I was there and they thought they can do it. It was just that simple.
Warwick F:
And when they attacked you... they didn't just attack you a little bit, they really hurt you-
Whitney S:
No, they were really trying to kill me that night.
Warwick F:
Hurt you severely. What was the effects of what they did to you?
Whitney S:
Yes, just one of those moments where you're going to go check your mail and people were like, "Why were you checking your mail at night? Blaming the victim, I'm like well, during the day, they smoke and drink all day. So I don't want to go and be involved and associate with people who are against me because I tattletale on them all the time about their smoking, even though they don't get in trouble, I just complain. I said, "I will wait until they are done doing what they are doing to go check my mail." So I don't have to walk through smoke and step over people and I might bump into someone and cause problems.
Whitney S:
And so that night when I went to check my mail, thought the coast was clear, I didn't smell any smoke, I didn't hear anyone. And to have a person that in passing that would say hello to you and you will say hello back to them for that person to come over to the property, see you there and come back. They had left. They came back to the property and these are people who I then wasn't complaining about their smoke. They were neighbors next door that were friends with the one I complained about.
Warwick F:
Oh my gosh.
Whitney S:
The one that I complained about didn't even do it. He just was complaining to them that I complained about him. And so they said, "We going to get her because she's a snitch." I'm like that's not snitching, I seen movies. That's not snitching. And so a guy, he came over and he was talking to me. And I was talking to him being polite and one of my other neighbors brought up my cookies. So the whole thing was a setup. And so she's talking to me about my cookies and I'm having conversation about like, "Oh, yeah, I just finished making the pecan, la-la-la." And when we're having this conversation is when the guy grabs my hair and he pulls me holding me back in place. And the other girl comes over and she starts punching on me and I break free. And I'm like look, don't touch. That hurt, but what really? Who does this? What kind of man does that? And why he's holding me in place, I was able to break free, but then I tripped over the lip in the door, my house shoe fell off and I hit the ground.
Whitney S:
And soon as I hit the ground, they all just flooded in there, so it was like these two girls and the guy all flooded in there real quick and I'm blocking my face because I'm too pretty to get hit in the face. And this is me dodging all of this and I'm like, I don't understand why short people feel the need that they can take people who have long arms and legs because I'm tall. And so it was like they weren't doing too much damage because every time they would come in to swing at me, I would swing back at them and my arms were longer than there's so it's like, I'm doing crab walk, kick to the face. But that moment when I'm thinking here comes a guy that always likes to say hello to me, he's walking into the building and I'm thinking here he's coming to break up this fight and I can get up off the ground, but instead I see him brace his self onto the wall and hold balance his self on one foot and stomps me in the face.
Whitney S:
And when he stomped me straight in the face, my head hits the ground and then that's when they were able to get me. And I was like oh, so now I'm just getting hit and kicked and stomped and I'm like oh, I'm still trying to move, still punching back, fractured my knuckle, it was just one of those moments where it was just so much. And it took... and I was like "mom," and they attacked her and had pushed her all up against and she end up bruising up her back. It was just a while crazy thing. My children came outside the apartment, they were upstairs calling for their mom. And to hear them and then the neighbor, only decent one in the building, comes out of his house like what's going on? And he pushes everybody off of me and me being how I am, I said, "They can't see that they hurt me." I was hurt. I was really hurt.
Whitney S:
Well, I stood up like a zombie, no emotion, just no tears, I just stood up like that didn't even hurt. It was hurting and I was able to-
Warwick F:
Was it like concussion? It was pretty severe things.
Whitney S:
Yeah, it was. I didn't want them to feel that they defeated me, even though-
Warwick F:
It's so sad because you weren't doing anything to them. You were just have asthma and didn't want smoking. It's just sad how humanity can be.
Whitney S:
It is.
Gary S:
And it's important to note here, let me say this, you had already started Nuttin' Butter Cookies. You were doing it out of your house. You had a license to do that.
Whitney S:
Right.
Gary S:
So you had started the business. You were-
Whitney S:
In March.
Gary S:
Right. What you were talking about earlier, this desire, this is your passion. I don't just want to pay the bills, I want to do what's my passion. You finally get to be doing that. You finally are doing that. You've got it all set up, you're selling cookies out of your home and then this attack comes and that derails... in addition to the terrible physical toll it takes on you, it also upends your business opportunity at that moment, correct?
Whitney S:
It literally did. It's like March, all the way to April going to October is when the incident took place. So it wasn't that long in between from starting it in March to having before I can even get it going stopped. It was just a sudden stop and it was just one of those moments where I felt like can I ever get a break? When do I get a chance to have a break? This was supposed to be my moment. This was me. I got to tend to myself. I like to do that and so it was just one of those moments I was like I have a concussion now, my right hand is fractured, I can't even do anything that I want to do and I'm sitting here like what is the next stage for me?
Whitney S:
And my next stage was looking at my children and they're looking at me like, mommy, you're going to be okay. And to see their faces because at the time they were like two and three. And so it was just one of those things where they would look at me like, mommy, don't give up. That's how they looked at me. Because I guess they could feel my energy because I felt like I was defeated and I felt like what was the purpose of even doing this. All my savings that I had from my house cleaning, I had used that to get the main stuff I needed, like ingredients and stuff to get the ball going and to pay for my licensing just for it to be, ha, you're not doing none of that.
Whitney S:
And so that didn't let me down because I'm too persistently stubborn. It's just one of those moments just felt like yeah, it set me back, but I was able to during my recuperation figure out the next strategy on how to get to the next stage of where I want to be. And I said working out of the house in this particular environment wasn't working that well anyway, so I started finding out about other events and other shows that I could go and participate in. So I wouldn't have to be there, but right after the incident, a program called The Victims Compensation program that California Office For Victims were able to... them and the police department because they did a wonderful job, the police, they're so wonderful. They did everything by the book, they went a little above and beyond. One of the officers even took me to the pharmacy after I did my interview about the incident and they took all my pictures and stuff.
Whitney S:
And when I went to go pick up my prescription, he took me to Walgreens to go pick up my medicine and he drove me home. And I thought it was funny that this officer, while he was bringing me home... the one who I used to complain about, his friends, the ones who attacked me, he was peeking through his downstairs window when the officer was bringing me home. And the officer saw him and he goes, "I think I'll check your mail for you right now too." He goes, "I don't think anyone's going to mess with me while I check your mail." And he goes, "So you can check it in the daytime."
Whitney S:
So I hand this officer my key and he checks the mail for me. And he was like, "Is there anything else you need from us, just let us know. Here's my card." And he hand me his card and they were standing around like all nervous and stuff, but it was just the Berkeley Police, they really did go a little extra for making sure that this was taken care of and they did everything by the book. And it was the DA who threw me under the bus. And it's just one of those moments where it's just like how would you think a person who commits a crime in our society they have some type of punishment, but that's not the case if you're brown on brown. And when you have a district attorney that tells you, "We're going to do everything we can, we're charging this person with a felony assault and battery. And once we catch the other ones because they're hiding, they're at large, when we catch them, we're going to charge them too."
Whitney S:
I'm like, yes, I'm suffering from a concussion. I'm like yes, justice, this is how it's supposed to go. This is how it should be going. I agreed to that. They're like, he's willing to take a plea so would you be willing to do that and he's going to get five years? And I was like, five years I almost die, I consider that attempted murder, but if you guys want to call it battery and assault, okay. Five years is better than nothing, so I agreed to that. Just to find out that that person wasn't doing any jail time, he got probation, five years felony probation. What is the point of that? And then to give me a stay away order to tell me, this person's not supposed to come around you any more for X amount of yards. And you're like, okay, but then he's in front of my house and you say, this person violating that order, this and that committed another crime, why should this person who almost killed me be allowed to be free and if he does another crime, then he goes to jail? That's backwards.
Warwick F:
It's hard to understand. Yeah, it's just crazy, but what's amazing to me is life isn't fair, doesn't seem objectively the lack of punishment for what was very serious, assault and battery, attempted murder. But yet, it doesn't seem like you let that get you down. Doesn't mean you're probably angry, probably doesn't mean it's not fair, but-
Whitney S:
It fueled me.
Warwick F:
Right. It fueled you. Yeah, because some people-
Whitney S:
It did. It made me so angry that these people thought that they could do it and get away with it and then the court system was basically saying that you're getting away with it. I said, they might have gotten away with doing that, but they're not going to stop me from starting this company that I been wanting to do for years. I have control over that.
Warwick F:
And that's amazing. In the midst of all that, it's always nice when you have a good Samaritan. In this case, the local policemen that helps out so the world is full of people unfortunately that do a lot of bad things, but there is some good people, there is some good Samaritans.
Whitney S:
There are.
Warwick F:
And you saw them, which was good. So you started this I understand that at some point you moved into a storefront and expanded it?
Whitney S:
Yes.
Warwick F:
And that was a few months before COVID hit, right?
Whitney S:
Yes, it's like-
Warwick F:
Which is crazy because that was another crucible if you will. You started it, this is great and then COVID hits and that made life tough to do it out of the storefront, who's got stores in the height of COVID.
Whitney S:
Well, especially in Berkeley, in Alameda County, they said, "All restaurants, bakeries closed." You're nonessential. But the corner store is essential and the beauty salons essential, but the bakery is not, okay. I don't get it. Let's make my hair pretty, but I don't want to eat. So a lot of us restaurants and bakeries and food establishments in the bay area, we all... bars, we were all at a halt. They said, "Doors are closed until further notice." And they literally shut us down. They saw people, they were coming in like shut it down, shut it down because clearly having your restaurant open during COVID hours is one of those things where you would get infected. So we close early, I don't get it. COVID still there after 2:00, it's still there. But I remember when March had hit, it's right at that moment when they were getting ready to start shutting things down, everything was like a wave.
Whitney S:
It was just a nonstop wave that kept coming and coming because at first it was like okay, we're hearing rumors of these things end of February about it could possibly affect us. And I'm keeping track of it because I watch bio movies so I'm like this is going to get worst before it gets better. We should start preparing and my preparation wasn't for the fact of ingredients. And so my priority was making sure that my children had can goods and foods just in case the power goes out or if people get sick and the plants not working. We need to be prepared. And soon as I gave my landlord the rent, I get this phone call from my landlord nagging me about, I haven't received your rent. This is March, there's so many people right now that has no job right now because everything is shut down. And I mailed you the rent. So I could've kept that whole thing for myself and used it for whatever, but I was being honest.
Whitney S:
And I said, I know, I owe you, I'm going to give it to you. I even told him it was going to be a bit late, it was too late when he got it. I can not control the mail. I just can't. If the mail system is having a delay, that's not my problem, but he nagged me, nagged me, nagged me about, "I'm going to have to kick you out." I'm like, okay. I can't be there anyways. I'm already closed. What are you kicking me out for? And then when he finally did get the rent, he sends me an oh, I got your rent. I'm waiting for an apology, didn't get it.
Warwick F:
Crazy. From what I understand, eventually, you ended up having to move out with COVID.
Whitney S:
Right.
Warwick F:
And I believe you had a lease and you had to keep paying him even though you weren't even there.
Whitney S:
I know. And then he reaches out to me and says, "With all of the COVID going on, is there anything, anything that we can help you with during this time of crisis and hardship." And I said, I'm thinking to myself is this a joke? This is the same person who was just threatening to evict me not too long ago, but I went on with it and I said because I like to try and find good in everybody because everybody has it. Some people don't have a lot of it, but everybody has a little bit in them. So I said maybe during this time of crisis, maybe he has a reality check on how he needs to approach people. So I said, "Well, the only thing that you can really help me with is maybe I can end my lease now."
Whitney S:
Because my lease had ended in August and it was March. And so I'm sitting there and I'm like maybe we can just end it now. He goes, "No, no, no, you're under contract. You still have to pay your rent." I'm like, but you just asked me what could you do to help me and that would help me a lot. Because if you can't help me with that, what else would you help me with?
Warwick F:
So that's another crucible, you have to pay this rent to a place you aren't even there anymore because of COVID because you can't... even in that circumstance, you didn't let it get you down.
Whitney S:
No.
Warwick F:
Because then you began I think selling cookies back in your apartment and driveway. And people picking up. So talk about how you didn't let that get you down, that you found a way through. So what did you do then when you had to go back to your home?
Whitney S:
I can definitely say when I came back to being home, I wasn't selling in March, wasn't selling in April, but toward the end part, the beginning of May, I'm sitting here like if I wanted to sell in my driveway, I couldn't right now because all the stores were still shut down and they had limits where you could only buy one thing of eggs. I'm like really, I can't work a business with one thing of eggs.
Gary S:
I'm a baker, I need more than that.
Whitney S:
Exactly, I said I need at least 10 boxes of butter. No, ma'am, you're hoarding butter. I need butter for my business. I need you to make an exception. You have to talk to the manager. No, we have one transaction at a time. I gets around those things, so we just go back multiple times. But I remember at this moment where I was really feeling like defeated again. It's like I can't even sell in my driveway because I don't even have the ingredients to even make cookies. And a couple of my neighbors who reached out to me were like, "Oh we heard that you lost your shop and all this COVID, we're just checking to make sure you were doing all right. And is there's anything we can do to help you?"
Whitney S:
And I was like, "Well, right now, it's just I don't even know how I'm going to get by because I can't even make my own money right now because there's no ingredients for me." And I didn't ask anyone because I'm just used to not asking people because I hear excuses. And so I was just venting and then one neighbor took it upon herself to spread the word to everybody that they have any extra right now to gather it all up. And they came to my house and they had bags of flour, they had some eggs, and they were like here's some sugar, here's something we all collected different sticks of butter. Here so you can still be able to get by. That was so... moments where I was like wow. I didn't realize that I lived in a community where people did those things.
Whitney S:
My mom had even reached out to a couple of her friends and he goes yeah, when I go to the store, while I'm there, I'm going to see if they have any of those ingredients. So people, when they were at the different stores, they would be able to get these different ingredients for me and they were like donating me flour and they were donating me vanilla so I could still be able to make cookies. So I got the ingredients so I set back up in the driveway. Said look, I ain't got no excuses no more. I can make these products. People want my cookies, I can still make them. So I'm still here.
Warwick F:
That's a miracle. In so much turmoil and people doing I don't know reprehensible things in the world you see on the news, but it's almost like you're in the desert and you see an oasis or from a faith perspective maybe a drop of grace. And it's like, wow maybe there's a few little good folks and drops of grace there. When people do that, it's unbelievable. It's not something you ever could've imagined that neighbors were donating things. And by doing that, they enabled you to feed your family and your boys.
Whitney S:
Exactly. And being in the driveway was the money I was making to pay for my shop because once they finally started to open things back up, they still had restrictions where they said only curbside, outside business. So you still couldn't have stuff indoors. So I'm like, it doesn't make since for me to make the cookies at home then take the cookies to my shop to sell on the sidewalk when I can just sell at home like I already was doing. Because I'm the original curbside cookies.
Warwick F:
And so from what I understand, you had lots of local folks, police, firemen, talk about how some of the local officials in Berkeley somehow word has spread about your amazing cookies.
Whitney S:
Someone called and complained about me is what started it. And I find that even in that moment of negative, it turned into a positive thing because someone complained that I was selling cookies in my driveway and I had to be illegal. Who does that? Who calls the police on someone selling cookies. Someone did, but officer pulled over real quick with his hands, he popped out of his car and he had his hands on his holster like he was reaching for his gun or something and just walking over like a cowboy.
Whitney S:
And he walks over like what's going on here? I got so much signs that says I'm cookie, I don't know why he asked me that question. But he goes what's going on here? And I said, just selling cookies, raising money to this officer. He goes what kind of cookies? And I told him. They're regular nut butter cookies. He goes, well, I never heard of a cookie like that. I said because I made it up, it's my recipe. And I'm telling him on these things and he goes, well, and what about this one? And he pointed to the pistachio. It does have a slightly green hint to it, I didn't have edibles. And he goes what about this one? And I said that's pistachio and I said you can have that one if you like pistachios. And he goes, I do like pistachios, he goes and it's just a regular cookie?
Whitney S:
They're all just regular cookies. He goes, well do you have permission to be here? And I said, this is my driveway, so yes. And I said I'm not quite sure what you're asking me because is that a trick question? He goes well do you have a license for anything? I said actually I do. I'm like how many people trying to sell something in their driveway have to actually pull out their credentials to the police officer because someone called on them?
Warwick F:
Unbelievable.
Whitney S:
And so I was sitting there and yeah, I showed them my health permit, showed him my business license and I showed him everything I had. And he looked and he was satisfied with that information. And he left and he's sitting in the car. And after he eats his cookie, he comes back over. I'm like, oh, now what? What now? Leave me alone. I'm not doing anything, but selling cookies. I know it's almost nighttime, but come on. And so he comes over and it wasn't a negative thing. He comes over to shake my hand. He goes, "That was a really good cookie." He goes, "You got a customer for life." He goes, "I'm going to tell everyone I know that you got the best cookies in Berkeley." And I went, "oh well, thank you officer. Thank you, appreciate it."
Whitney S:
And that particular night, while he's sitting over there in his vehicle finishing the rest of his cookie, a guy up to no good, I saw him, I had my bat underneath the table. And this guy comes walking over like he's getting ready to do something he not supposed to be doing, but every since my incident, I'm alert to everything. And he was being weird. He was acting like he was casing me out pretty much. He was observing what was going on. And I'm like what kind of person sees the little girl selling cookies and you want to rob her? Really? There people would like that. And so I really feel that he was up to something because when he comes and he walks past me ad he walks past me again. And I have my bat, I'm ready. If he tries it, he's not going to get my money easily. We both were going to be hurt tonight, not tonight.
Whitney S:
And I remember that when he got ready to walk past, he was so focused on me, he didn't even see the cop car. And so the cop goes [woop, woop, woop] with his lights and siren and the guy takes off running. And I never saw him ever again, but the cop comes and he goes, "Are you all right?" "Yeah, I'm good." And every since that moment, the cops had relayed to other officers so when they're en route under different beats, they would pass by when they see me at night, just thumbs up. Checking to see how I'm doing. I had free security. This is nice, I got police security, hey, free security and they'll buy cookies. I remember this one night when the fire truck had pulled over. I'm thinking to myself, oh what's going on now? It's always something, can a sister get a break?
Whitney S:
And I'm sitting here and just one fireman gets out of the truck and he comes over and he says, "A cop told me that you got the best cookies in town." And I was just like... I said, okay. And he's talking to me about the cookies and I told him about all the different cookies I had. And the other fire... what do you call them, fire workers because there's fire women?
Warwick F:
True.
Gary S:
Fire person, the other fire person.
Warwick F:
Exactly.
Whitney S:
There we go, fire person. Yeah, we're going to roll with that one. But I remember, he came over and he was the guinea pig because he's the one that was the pickiest out of all of them so he tried it. And at that time before COVID I used to offer samples. And so I gave him a sample of a cookie and he waved his hands up and with a thumb and then the rest of the fire people, persons come out of the truck and they walk over to the booth. And I'm standing there like what? This is one of those moments like, really a fire truck pulled up in front to get cookies from me because a police officer told them that they were good.
Warwick F:
It's amazing. So all these crucibles and this one we haven't really even touched on. The flu shot episode where for most people the flu shot isn't a big deal and some doctors say you should get a flu shot even if you don't want to and it ends up what paralyzing your left side, hand, how many months did it take to get through the whole flu shot terrible episode?
Whitney S:
Yeah, I ended up with a severe case of bursitis in my left shoulder. And the problem is the nurse injected the flu vaccine into my bursa sac, which is way too far up in your arm to be getting the shot to begin with, but when they stuck in there, the fluids in my bursa sac were gone and the flu vaccine caused an infection. And it slightly tore a little bit of my rotator cuff while the needle went in. So it was just all wrong to begin with. I would have been better off being sick.
Warwick F:
And how long did it take you to recover from all that?
Whitney S:
It took from January to May for me to be able to use my arm again after physical therapy. It's like who has physical therapy after getting a flu shot?
Warwick F:
And for you to provide for your kids, you have to bake.
Whitney S:
Yes.
Warwick F:
So it's like you can't not bake. So here you've had everything from a flu shot to be beaten up by neighbors, all of the things that you've been through having to pay rent for a place you don't even use, COVID, and yet none of that gets you down. I think one of the things I think you said about your vision, I read somewhere you see your business as a gas station in the desert. Talk about what does that mean to your vision because it sounds like nothing gets you down despite being knocked down, you get back up and it's like you just don't let it get you down. Talk about that vision of the gas station and the desert.
Whitney S:
The vision of that is everyone seeing that one gas station, there's the tumbleweeds and snakes and there's just nothing but that. And you have that one spot right there just thriving and it's still hanging in there despite of it looking like crickets around. There's nothing going on, but they're still there and they're still standing. And you have no choice but to go to the place because it's the only one. And when I started my company, I wanted to have that. You can't go to... I made it so complicated for myself because I made all my recipes so anybody who wanted to try and copy and have a spin off of the cookies, I said, I'm going to cover all the nuts. So can't no one say, well we have almond and she doesn't. No, I got all the nuts. And so I said every nut, I got nuts you never heard of.
Whitney S:
And so I wanted to do this to make it so complicated because people copy all the time, that's just our nature. We see someone doing it, we want to try and join into it. For me, I like to one up myself, so when I do something, I go I can make it better. And then I'll go, yeah, let's make that better and I'm talking to myself like let's do that.
Warwick F:
So if we pick a summing up here and all, there's a lot of people right now going through tough times, whether it's COVID or just frankly the division within our country, within our world. It just seems like things are as bad as it's ever been in so many ways. It's just so sad, but I think there's a lot of people who been through tough times, different crucibles, what's your message of hope to people that feel like, gosh, I don't know that I can get myself back up again. This is just too much. What's your message of hope to a lot of folks who frankly are hurting right now?
Whitney S:
Well, help comes in the most unexpected places when you least expect it. At that moment when you feel that you really can't go on, there is always going to be that one person that you wouldn't expect to do it, will reach out and help you. And I find that you can't really fail if you don't keep trying because once you give up, you failed, you're done, that's over. But as long as you're like, I can still make it, you can still get that little bit in there, you can still push through just enough. It's hard, it hurts, but once you get past that moment, you can sit back and go, I made it. I overcomed that. I'm no longer feeling that pain anymore. I'm finally where I need to be. You get yourself out of it. We got to pull ourselves out of the mud sometimes.
Whitney S:
And dust off the mud, you walk through what's drying on and cracked up and their pants and flake it off and get going. It's just sometimes you just have to do it.
Gary S:
And sometimes you have to bake the mud into the cookies going back to the very first story that you told, right?
Whitney S:
Exactly. My first cookies was a mud pie.
Warwick F:
Maybe you should resurrect that, in honor of my grandfather, here's kind of the first cookies I made.
Whitney S:
I know huh.
Gary S:
This would be the time in most podcasts that I say, the captain turned on the fasten seatbelt signs and it's time to land the plane, but I'm going to say this time I think I heard the oven ding, it's time to remove the cookies. So we're getting to the point where we've got to let the cookies cool a little bit. But before we go, Whitney, I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't do a couple of things. One, in a minute here, I'm going to give you a chance to let people know where they can find Nuttin' Butter Cookies online and connect with you. But after you do that, after you let people know how they can get a hold of you, one of the things again, going back to what I said at the top of the show, this questionnaire that you filled out, one of the questions we ask people all the time is if there's only one question we could ask, what would it be?
Gary S:
And you've talked a lot about not giving up, but the question you said we should ask you is what was the reason you didn't give up? So tell people how they can find you on the internet, get a chance to taste your cookies perhaps? And then leave listeners with what was it that led to Whitney Singletary White not giving up through all of these crucibles that you've described?
Whitney S:
Well, you can find my cookies at my website of nuttinbuttercookies.com, which is N-U-T-T-I-N-B-U-T-T-E-R-C-O-O-K-I-E-S.com. It has all of my social medias and everything and all the ordering. And they ship well all through the United States.
Gary S:
All right.
Whitney S:
And but for me, that to answer your question, my sons. I remember after my flu shot, I was laying there crying to myself and he came to me and the message that I been teaching them their whole lives is we're not quitters. You have to try, you can't say I don't want to do something, try it. Try this food, try this thing. And when he came to me and he hugged me and said, "Mommy." And I said what? And he was like why you not making cookies anymore? And I told him and his reason for what he said to me was, "You can't give up mommy. We're not quitters." And the look on his face was so set on he was a coach. It's like get up, you can do it. Go. And he said this to me and his brother was like, "Yeah, mommy, you have to do it. You love cookies."
Whitney S:
And they were still my reason for why I pushed through. It doesn't matter if I'm in pain, doesn't matter if I'm tired, doesn't matter if I'm hungry. I'll hold my bladder so I can finish doing what I need to do because they got me so focused where it's like at the end goal, I want them to be able to not have to go through so much that I go through. I'll go through it all so they don't have to.
Gary S:
And you mentioned when I first reached out to you to be on the show, that this is the first podcast you've ever been on?
Whitney S:
Right.
Gary S:
So based on that answer about your sons, and hopefully they'll listen to this episode when it comes out, give your sons a shout out. Call them by name, let them hear themselves on the podcast and on the radio if you will.
Whitney S:
Yeah, well shout out to my oldest, Wesley and my youngest, Wyatt. Keep doing your work because I know downstairs playing games thinking I don't know. I know everything.
Warwick F:
Moms do. That's very true.
Gary S:
Warwick, before I wrap up, one of the things that you say all the time on the show and then just in conversations we have at Crucible Leadership is that your life of significance can be big. It can lead an international corporation or your life of significance can be small. And by small I don't mean impact and you don't mean impact, but it can be a more limited scope. And what Whitney's described right here is her life of significance, her community and her boys. Talk about why that is such a critical expression of a life of significance?
Warwick F:
Yeah, it's easy to say well who am I? I'm not leading some big corporation or nonprofit. I'm not trying to make the clean water in Africa or solve all of the huge problems we have in this world, but to me you make a difference in one life, it's big. Your mom, your grandfather, they taught you certain values. They made a difference in your life. You're making a difference in your sons' life. You're making a difference in your community with friends, neighbors, police, people in the fire department. You're having an impact everywhere and one of the things we didn't get to but I think is fascinating is this legacy of baking, it goes back I don't know maybe 150 years or so, back to I think it was your grandfather's great-grandmother, something like that.
Whitney S:
Right, yeah.
Warwick F:
Maybe it wasn't the exact recipe but that legacy of baking and I'm sure there's probably a sense of trying to help friends and family. There's a legacy that goes back a long time. And you're just making a huge impact and a huge difference in people's lives and your family. And so I think your testimony is anybody can make a difference if they don't give up and they're passionate about what they do. You're having probably I'm sure a bigger impact than you realize. So you fill people with hope. Whitney doesn't let stuff get her down, maybe I shouldn't give up either, right? Just one more day, one more step.
Whitney S:
That's what I hear all the time.
Warwick F:
It's all it take, so. I think it's an inspiring story. I think it will give a lot of people hope.
Gary S:
Absolutely and as we wrap up listeners, I want to direct you back to this spirit that you heard from Whitney in this conversation. She describes some pretty difficult things that happened to her. Pretty physically devastating, emotionally devastating things have happened to her. Go back and listen to the way she talked about them. She laughed. She had a positive attitude, she had a facing forward attitude to those kind of things.
Gary S:
And if you take nothing else away from this episode, that's one of the keys to bouncing back from your crucible. Is having a perspective like Whitney's perspective which is tomorrow can be a better day. And this isn't going to stop me, this isn't going to get me down. I'm going to end on one of the things that Whitney wrote again in her questionnaire, which is so profound in its simplicity Whitney, but you said this when we said what's one bit of advice you'd offer listeners.
Gary S:
And this would be the key takeaway from this episode, listener and that's this. These are Whitney Singetary's words. "You can't fail if you keep trying. Find a reason to push through no matter how small or big the reason and let that fuel you." I've been in the communications business long enough to know when someone's wrapped, put a bow on a package as pretty as that. I'm going to shut up, except to say this, thank you listener for spending this time with us at Beyond the Crucible. Warwick and I have a little favor to ask of you. If you enjoy what you heard here today in our interview with Whitney, please hit subscribe on the app on which you're listening to this podcast.
Gary S:
That way you'll be alerted to every new episode, you'll never miss one. You'll hear more great interviews like this, more conversations with Warwick as he talks about the principles that undergird and uphold crucible leadership. And until the next time we're together, remember this, which is so evident in this discussion we've had with Whitney and that is your crucible experiences are painful and they're difficult and they're hard. And they can come in rapid succession. It's not just when we say crucible experiences, we mean that. Many times, there are more than one. It's not experience, it's experiences and Whitney has had many of them. But they were not the end of her story.
Gary S:
They were the beginning, each one was a beginning of a new chapter in her story that pushed her, that led her to walk down a road to a life that's brighter. That's better, that is on purpose, that is focused on helping others and building something bigger than herself. So your crucible, listeners, your crucibles, they aren't the end of your story, they're the beginning of your story if you learn the lessons of them. And they can be the best chapter of your story because at the end of the day, where they lead is to a life of significance.
We know them when we’re in them. Or avoiding them. Uncomfortable conversations when it feels like one wrong word — or even one right word expressed wrongly — can explode like a hand grenade. But we can avoid the detonation and destruction, Harvard Negotiation Project and Harvard Law School lecturer Sheila Heen explain in unpacking the insights and action items in her books Difficult Conversations and Thanks for the Feedback. The key, she says, is recognizing that in tough conversations we’re speaking words but exchanging emotions.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Sheila H:
One of the things that at the end of the day is true is that more than people will remember the facts of exactly who said what in the exchange, they're going to remember how they felt treated. And moving your purpose from, "Let me just reiterate and persuade you about why I'm right," to "And so my purpose is to have a learning conversation. I don't know whether I'll change my mind at the end of this, but I at least want to learn why we see it differently and how it's been for you and what you're worried about." And we also try to teach people to listen for feelings as well as listen for facts. Because if I can listen for feelings, I can really hear what's behind your concerns, objections, et cetera.
Gary S:
Conversations in which the goal is to learn what the other person's thinking and to have the other person learn what you're thinking, listening for feelings in conversations rather than trying to make points and win arguments, these are just two ways to navigate difficult conversations that we explore on today's episode. Hi. I'm Gary Schneeberger the cohost of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership.
Gary S:
And today we have an interview with Sheila Heen. Sheila is the founder of Triad Consulting Group, and she's been on the Harvard Law School faculty as a lecturer on law since 1995. Sheila spent more than 20 years with the Harvard Negotiation Project, developing negotiation theory and practice. She specializes in particularly difficult negotiations, what we might call crucible negotiations, where emotions run high and relationships become strained. For the purposes of our discussion today, Sheila is the coauthor of two New York Times best sellers.
Gary S:
The first book was Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, and her most recent book Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well, (Even When It Is Off Base, Unfair, Poorly Delivered, And, Frankly, You're Not In The Mood). What you'll hear from this conversation today is how you can, especially in the midst of a crucible, allow for both sides in a conversation not only to speak, but to truly be heard. And as you'll hear from Sheila herself as we kick off her interview, she comes by her expertise in this area quite honestly.
Warwick F:
Well Sheila, it's an honor to have you. So just so the listeners know kind of how this all came about is, like many of us in the era of COVID, I have three adult kids in their 20s who are all wonderful people just pursuing different things. And my daughter is in the middle of my two sons. She said, "Dad, I came across this book and article on difficult conversations and I think the author that would be great to have on your podcast." So I took a look and I thought, "Wow. Well, we at Crucible Leadership and Beyond the Crucible we're all about bouncing back from adversity, and as you're doing that, you are going to have some difficult conversations. And so how do you do that well?" So I was fascinated by this.
Warwick F:
And I like to think I'm reasonably good at communications, fairly discerning, but I learned a lot just from reading some of the stuff that you've written Sheila. It's like, "Wow." I mean, I'm not bad in this area, but there's a lot I didn't know. So talk about what led you to write these books. And obviously one follows the other, Difficult Conversations and Thanks for the Feedback, but what was some of the genesis of that? Was there anything in growing up or... Often there's a story behind the story. But what was sort of the backstory that led you to focus so much of your working life on these two books?
Sheila H:
Yeah. It's such a good question. And it's interesting because I think when you look back on your life, things are much more clear than when you're living them at the time. Right? That's the challenge. But there's also a way in which you're stitching together things which may or may not be related. Right? But when I do look back, I think about the fact that... I grew up in the Midwest in Iowa and Nebraska where, although I don't think there were big secrets that were not talked about in my family, the general tenor I think is, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
Sheila H:
And conflict was kind of a big deal. I have very vivid memories of the arguments between my parents that I witnessed because they were relatively rare, so I knew it was a big deal. And then in college, I went to college in California and got interested in public policy and international relations and was doing simulations, negotiating between the two World Wars, that kind of thing, and my advisor, as I was thinking about going to law school... my dad's a lawyer by the way, said, "I really have an instinct that this negotiation thing might be your thing, and if that's your thing, Harvard really is the center of some of the most interesting work being done."
Sheila H:
And that's kind of how I ended up at Harvard. But if we then also want to go one step further, I was in a really hard on-again, off-again relationship during law school. We kept breaking up and getting back together and breaking up and getting back together. And I knew in my heart of hearts this was not the right relationship for me, but I kept getting talked back into it. And I was simultaneously taking negotiation class, serving as a teaching assistant for negotiation class and trying to figure out why can I not negotiate my way out of this relationship?
Sheila H:
And a lot of it was a conversation with myself about whether I... He would say, "You're not giving it a fair shot," et cetera, and I'd think, "Well, I want to be fair so I guess..." And it took me a long time to realize this is not actually a negotiation. If I don't want to be in this relationship, he doesn't have to agree. And he can think I'm a terrible person and okay, I am hopeful he's not right about that but he can exist in the world and think that about me and that will not kill me. So that's a little bit of I think the backstory of what led me to what is missing from these negotiation skills and why am I so stuck when I think I'm a pretty thoughtful, reasonable person.
Sheila H:
And of course when I watch other people be in on-again, off-going relationships, I think, "Why are you being so stupid?" While I'm in one, while I can't seem to find the exit door. It keeps leading me back into the room.
Warwick F:
What it probably makes us think is, as smart as we all like to think we are, we have moments where we feel maybe we're kind of dumb and stupid. I mean, where we're kind of less than we... We're not operating at maximum intellectual, emotional, spiritual capacity and we're-
Sheila H:
I think that's exactly right. And sometimes I'm very aware that I'm not operating at my best and other times I'm so stuck that I can't see that I am stuck or why I'm stuck, whereas people around me see it faster than I can.
Warwick F:
Well, and that's why friends are useful. I mean, just one other point on this. Do you ever kind of... Obviously you're very familiar with your books and reread it and say, "Boy. Back when I was in California in that relationship, I needed to read or think about chapter six and seven and five. I had kind of..." Okay. But you could probably... Because you actually give examples on your book of relationships. You give professional examples, but relationship examples. And you look at that and say, "Diagnose it like self-autopsy, if you will. Yeah. That it was this and this that was really missing in that conversation."
Sheila H:
Yeah. And by the way, I can't take all the credit for that because what ended up happening is that I was doing independent research projects during law school with Doug Stone and Bruce Patton. We became coauthors of Difficult Conversations. And my third-year paper, which Bruce supervised was actually about a terrible interaction I had in an elevator when I went to renew my passport in Los Angeles. And there was someone in the elevator making these awful racist, demeaning comments, and we're in a packed elevator of people and no one said anything. And it was so upsetting. I just felt ill. I was trembling when I got out of the elevator and I felt ill for the rest of the day and every time I thought about it.
Sheila H:
And so I decided to take that moment as a moment of analysis to try to figure out what was going on with me, what was I trying to accomplish, what were my options that I couldn't see at the moment. And so I wrote that paper while Bruce and Doug were actually asking some of the same questions. So as I graduated and joined them full time, we found that we were coming at those questions from different directions, but that we were trying to see what are the patterns in what gets us stuck and what would help. And it turns out those patterns... The underlying structure of difficult conversations is the same, whether it's in your personal life or your professional life. And that's one of the reasons we wrote the book really with a huge range, every possible combination or context we could think of. We wanted to include real examples.
Warwick F:
And that's very helpful. And we're going to get into here in just a second just some of the key elements of difficult conversations. But as I reflect on this, I think as some listeners will know, I grew up in a large wealthy family newspaper business in Australia, it kind of had the equivalent of New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. And like some other relatives of mine, I went did my undergrad at Oxford, worked on Wall Street banking, Harvard Business School. So I like to think I'm reasonably intelligent.
Warwick F:
And so I come back and I launched this two billion plus takeover and did so many dumb things. I mean, that was within months of graduating from Harvard Business School. It's meant to give you some level of understanding of things. And there was so many dumb... I even look back then... That must have been another person. I couldn't have been that... So many dumb assumptions. But often when you look beneath the waterline, it was various emotional dynamics. Without belaboring it too much, some other relatives had thrown my dad out as chairman 11 years before in '76. So come '87, I felt like the company wasn't being well run along the ideals of the founder, it wasn't being well managed.
Warwick F:
So there's all these emotional subtext in which my normal level of reasoning was subverted by some various emotional things that I wasn't fully aware of that led me to make some poor decisions. And the classic was, talk about difficult non-conversations, I was so focused on, "I don't need any more information. There's right, there's wrong, let's go." Sort of like the Charge of the Light Brigade. Launch this takeover. And I had conversations with other close family members who were heavily involved in the family business the night before. I'm doing this in the morning. Clearly I wasn't interested in listening, I was informing them. I mean, what is-
Sheila H:
Yes.
Warwick F:
It's a rhetorical question which you don't need to answer. But what is the point? That's not a conversation. That's like an edict. That's like a diatribe. I mean, it was just... I just blindsided them. I just can't believe I did that. I was just so stupid and disappointing any way. So all that's to say is bright people can make really dumb decisions because it's all this emotional feeling, identity subtext.
Gary S:
And that's an interesting-
Sheila H:
Yeah.
Gary S:
... point to sort of talk about... We talk about difficult conversations in the context of your book Sheila, but we've started to call them crucible conversations here at crucible leadership because... And what you just described Warwick is crucibles can be conversations that aren't had?
Warwick F:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Gary S:
Right? They can cause crucibles if you don't have conversations. And sometimes conversations can be... The actual difficult conversation itself can be a crucible. And I pulled a statistic or some stats, Sheila, from an article that someone wrote in reference to your book. And this was from a 2013 survey of 200 professionals. And this is what was found about people's attitudes toward difficult conversations.
Gary S:
97% of respondents said they were concerned about the associated levels of stress for the other person. 94% were worried about damaging the other person's self-esteem. 92% were fearful of causing upset. And this is the one that really got me. 80% of respondents said these conversations were part of their job. They had to have these difficult conversations. Eight of 10 people said they had to have them, but more than half indicated, they didn't feel like they had adequate training on how to conduct them. And I think that goes to speak to a couple of quotes from your book Difficult Conversations.
Gary S:
One, the idea that you got to have them, but you don't want to have them. You talk about how delivering a difficult message is like throwing a hand grenade. So, that will kind of scare you off a little bit. So there's that aspect of it. But on the positive side, what you say in the book, is that we think there may be a broader organizational need driving interest in a business community. A recognition that the longterm success and even survival of many organizations may depend on their ability to master difficult conversations. That's a hard road to plow. A hard road to pave when 97% of people who responded, business professionals, say they're concerned about the levels of stress.
Sheila H:
Indeed it is. And I think part of what you're capturing in those statistics, I think, is the either-or choice that we feel. Warwick like you were saying, "I'm smart, I've run the numbers, I have the story that reinforces why I'm right about what I'm about to do, and that story feels like I'm just factually right about the risks and what we're putting on the line and how this is going to turn out." But of course at a deeper level, it's also about the story we tell ourselves about who am I and what are my responsibilities here? Or I'm playing the role of the hero who's going to save the day. Right?
Warwick F:
Right.
Sheila H:
And that's sort of happening at the deeper level. And Gary, when you raise how worried we are about creating stress for the other person, or emotional upset, or self-esteem issues, that's tied to identity because we're thinking, "Well, I don't want to be the kind of person who upsets other people." Right? "Or doesn't treat them fairly." But I'm now caught because I want to be a good colleague, but I don't know how to bring this up without being a bad person. And I think the problem is that we're thinking my choices are either explain to them why I'm right and they're wrong, or why they're the problem and they need to change or keep quiet about it.
Sheila H:
And one of the things we say in the book is that we are in a message-delivery sort of stance. So it's like, "Do I throw the hand grenade or not?" And holding onto it, not saying anything is no better. Right? Once the pin has been pulled, you can't hold on to the hand grenade.
Warwick F:
Either way damage will be done to you, to them.
Sheila H:
Either way damage is being done to you and to them. Yeah.
Warwick F:
Or to both. One of the things I think that's fascinating is you break down conversations into three areas, the "What happened?" conversation, the feelings conversation, and the identity. It made so much sense as I was reading it. And often I think, as you point out, we get into the "What happened?" They did that, this was wrong, or I said this, or we're just dealing in, "Well, let's talk about the facts." Okay. This business decision makes no sense, therefore I have to correct them. And you're not at all realizing there's a feeling and a subtext and identity. So talk about why we just tend to deal with the visible, if you will, with the what happened and why those other two components are so important.
Warwick F:
Because I think most of us and I like to think I'm reasonably good at communication, it's one of my highest values, but I don't think about those things consciously. So talk about the differences in those three.
Sheila H:
Yeah. So this is sort of the central learning for us that's captured in the book, which is that if we want to understand these conversations, because there's so much that people don't say to each other, because they're afraid to say it, you've got to look beyond what people say to what they're really each thinking and feeling and what we call their internal voice. And if you look at people's internal voices in the midst of a difficult conversation or a conflict, what you'll find is that they're very predictable. What we're preoccupied with is very predictable and it falls into those three buckets that you mentioned Warwick.
Sheila H:
The first is that we each have a story about what we call what happened, which includes what has happened up until this point... I've got a story about that, what is happening as you and I are, or aren't having this conversation and what we each think should happen. And that story itself actually has three sub-components because we're each preoccupied with what we're right about, whose fault it is that we're having this problem and to the extent that you're being difficult, I have a theory about why you're acting that way, what your intentions or motivations or character might be. You just don't get it.
Sheila H:
You're controlling, you're whatever. You won't listen to anybody, you're power-hungry. So that's our story about what happened and that's coming from both parties by the way. But then if you look a little deeper, by the time something becomes a difficult conversation, one and often both parties have strong feelings that we're trying to figure out what to do with maybe particularly in a professional context. And those feelings are often a bundle of frustration, anxiety, confusion, maybe self-doubt, anxiety, guilt. We're not talking about them, but they're infusing the conversation.
Sheila H:
And then at the deepest level, if something's a difficult conversation, what we started to notice is that there's something the situation suggests about you that feels like it's at stake. Am I kind or not kind if I'm going to have this conversation and hurt someone's feelings? Am I being fair or not fair? Am I competent? Do I know what I'm doing? Warwick I wonder to what extent the night before you heard people's doubts about the plan, your plan as maybe, "We don't believe in you. We're not sure you're worthy. We're not sure you're smart enough." And you're like, "I just came back from Harvard. All those people are maybe not smart enough but I'm bringing that 'wisdom' back with me." I don't know if you felt that as an identity hook in their doubts about you or about-
Warwick F:
Yeah.
Sheila H:
It's not really about you, but of course you hear it as doubts about me rather than doubts about my plan.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, I think you tend to believe your own truth as being absolute truth. Like these other members of my family threw my dad out as chairman, and I thought he was a brilliant intellectual person I admired and loved greatly. And how could they do that? So there was this emotional subtext. My parents reinforced me growing up, "Yep. The company is not being well run," and a bit too sensational and the papers, so I just had this feeling of this is true and this almost heroic type of thing. So I felt like, "Well, I don't need more information because I know what's true. It's patently obvious."
Warwick F:
I didn't need to ask them their opinion. Or maybe they thought my dad was hanging around too long and maybe it was time for a new direction. And I had this just notion of what was true, but some of these subtexts of emotions of how could they do this to such a wonderful person? This feeling of this was not fair, this is not just, not conscious. And then identity, my whole identity was wrapped up with Fairfax Media. And yeah. I mean, you tend to feel like it's a sacred cause, I know it's what are they... That phrase the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Beware of the person who's on some righteous crusade or mission. They can be good, but be careful.
Sheila H:
Yes. Absolutely.
Warwick F:
A lot of bad things are done by well-meaning people. Sometimes not intentionally.
Sheila H:
And I think that one of the things, I mean, you have lots of company in history of sons and daughters who have their life story and purpose wrapped up in, or certainly heavily influenced by sort of avenging what happened to their parents. I mean, my dad left his firm for ethics reasons. Right? And I think my own path of being an entrepreneur was heavily influenced by his view that organizations can make bad decisions and you need to stick up for what's right. So I also think that what we need to get out of, if you're going to have a better conversation and make good decisions, it means leaving behind each of us being focused on what we're right about and talking past each other, and instead shifting to get curious about, well, so why do we see this so differently? Why am I so sure that this is the right path? And why are you really not sure? To say the least.
Sheila H:
And if we can tease apart, what are you looking at and what am I looking at and why do we come to different conclusions here, we're at least going to have a better conversation where we're really listening to each other and we can isolate, are we looking at different things? Are we interpreting them differently? Do we have different predictions? Do you think this is the right path but now is not the right time? Often we're each actually right about what we think the conversation or the decision is about.
Sheila H:
And then shifting from blame to looking at what did we each contribute that got us here to this tough moment or to this place where there's conflict and friction between us, and that tells us if we each could change a couple of things, would we be able to work better together? Et cetera. So it's about actually first negotiating with your own internal voice, then stepping into the conversation with a very different stance.
Warwick F:
Yeah. It's so true. It's funny. I've kind of written a book that will get published next year that talks about leadership lessons through the lens of my story and some inspirational historical figures. So when it comes to myself it's typically I did this, don't do this, do this instead. And one of the things I talk about is some of what you're saying exactly right now is I had this belief of what is true about other family members, but I never sat down and chatted to them about, "Well, what's your perspective? What's your truth? What's your perspective?" And if I'd done that, maybe I would have learned some things. You can't always assume that your truth is the truth.
Warwick F:
So yeah. A lot of what you're saying, I look back on and saying, "Yeah. That would have been helpful." Even what I wanted to do in life. I really wasn't wired to be some Rupert Murdoch type of person. I'm more a reflective adviser. That's a whole nother conversation, which I talk a lot about in the book. But yeah. Just that sense of be willing to listen. I love that phrase you just mentioned, not so much focused on blame but contribution why you're each contributing to the situation. Talk about why that's such a huge paradigm shift, contribution versus blame.
Sheila H:
I think because, I mean, I think human beings when things go wrong, we instinctively look for whose fault is this. And that answer tends to be singular. If it's not, it's mostly your fault, it's at least those guys are the ones who dropped the ball. Right? It might be a group. And making a shift to say, "Look. Let's assume instead that everybody contributed in some way to the problem of where we are now." And it's not necessarily 50/50, it could be 90/10.
Sheila H:
But thinking about what did we each do or fail to do that got us here then actually tells us what would solve the problem and allows us to hold each other accountable for choices. That okay, these are some things I think I need to do differently, here's what would be helpful if you could do it differently, then let's check in. Because I don't want to have the same conversation next week and next month. And it allows us to actually signal that actually I don't think this is about blame, this is about actually making it better and solving the problem. And that's a really strong signal to send.
Sheila H:
What the research shows is that one of the most reliable ways to build trust or regain trust is to make what's called a statement against interest, being to say something that you would not say it because it's not good for you, except for the need to be honest. And owning your contribution to the problem, saying, "Looking back, there are some things I wish I had done differently that I think didn't help us," is a really strong signal that's a statement against interest. It's saying I'm not about blame, I just want this to get better.
Warwick F:
I think that's true. What I love about some of the examples you mentioned is, even if you don't think it's all your fault, just... I guess part of being a leader is being willing to go first to saying, "Well, I probably didn't help matters in that conversation when I said A or B," or "I assumed this and that about you and I'm sorry," or "That probably didn't help." Then you give the other person space potentially to say, "Yeah. I probably could have handled it better," rather than going in there all guns blazing saying, "Look. It ticks me off that you did A, B and C, and therefore you are A, and you are B."
Warwick F:
It's different as you point out saying, "It made me feel that." That's not saying it's truth, but saying you are... It's like it's your truth. So just that willing to be vulnerable and go first. It doesn't guarantee a positive contribution, but it helps. I mean that to me-
Sheila H:
It definitely helps.
Warwick F:
... makes so much sense.
Sheila H:
Yeah. It definitely helps. And also, if you look at the research, reciprocity is one of the strongest social norms. So if you blame me, I'm going to blame you back or blame somebody else. But if you take the initiative as a leader to be accountable for your part of the problem, it's much more likely that I'll lean in to own mine. Now what's the worst that could happen? The worst that could happen is I say, "Oh gosh Warwick. I'm so glad you finally admitted that this is all your fault." Right? This conversation is going so much better than I expected it to.
Sheila H:
But that doesn't have to be the end of the conversation. You can still then say, "Look. I do think that I did some things that didn't help. At the same time, I can't fix this by myself. I think actually there were a number of things that got us here and there are a couple of things that would be helpful if you might be willing to change them." So that the risk that we feel we're taking is a risk that you can also influence over time. If they don't take the invitation right away, be patient and keep at it.
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Gary S:
And because so much of what we're talking about here is emotions, it's the emotional undercurrent of the conversation, we're speaking words to each other, but what we're really doing is imparting emotions to each other. That's the thing that's not being seen in word clouds above our heads. Because that's true, when you do those kinds of things, when there is reciprocity of, "Okay. I could have done this differently," or "Boy. I messed this up a little bit," it's true that that deescalates, and it can deescalate rather quickly the negative emotions of a conversation. And that helps it move to a place where it's beneficial and healing. Is that fair?
Sheila H:
I think that's really fair and I'm glad you brought that up, Gary, because one of the things that at the end of the day is true is that more than people will remember the facts of exactly who said what in the exchange, they're going to remember how they felt treated. And moving your purpose from, "Let me just reiterate and persuade you about why I'm right," to "And so my purpose is to have a learning conversation. I don't know whether I'll change my mind at the end of this, but I at least want to learn why we see it differently and how it's been for you and what you're worried about." And we also try to teach people to listen for feelings, as well as listen for facts. Because if I can listen for feelings, I can really hear what's behind your concerns, objections, et cetera.
Warwick F:
And it just seems like so-
Sheila H:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
... much as you write in the book, what lies behind the conversation is sense of feelings and identity. And the more that you try to understand yourself and certainly understand the other person or through a learning conversation, that helps. I mean, that's so important. I know sometimes I'll be angry or fearful and I'll be like... And I won't know why. And so for me, if it's personal, first stop would be my wife I'd say, "But I'm feeling fearful about something, but I don't know what it is." And we'll chat. And nine times out of 10, she'll nail it or we'll figure it out. And then, "Okay. Now I can deal with..." Or identity, I'm far more attuned to that.
Warwick F:
So the more we understand feelings and identity about ourself, it's a big help if we react with like, "Why did I react that way? Was it feelings? Was it identity?" And the more we can... You can't know somebody else's feelings and identity but you can explore and probe. I mean that to me, that's... Talk about why that is so huge, and dealing with feelings and identity, both in yourself and having a learning conversation with others. Why is that a game changer rather than sticking in the what happened circle.
Sheila H:
I think because what you're hearing is what's really at the heart of it. So by the time something becomes a difficult conversation, typically you've got two problems. You've got the surface problem of whatever we're arguing about. For instance, I've had several conversations in the last three weeks with my parents about, are we going to be able to get together at Christmas or not?
Sheila H:
So I live on the East Coast now, one of my sisters actually lives down the street from me in the same town on the East Coast, my parents still live in Nebraska, my other sister lives an hour away from them in Nebraska. We alternate years. So this is a Heen year. And my parents keep bringing up have we made a decision about Christmas? And I keep saying I don't think we can make a decision yet. Right?
Warwick F:
Right.
Sheila H:
And as long as I'm focused on what's the factual question we're trying to decide, is it safe? You guys are in a hotspot now. We used to be the hotspot. What would it entail? What risks would we be taking? We can talk about that factual thing, but the deeper question is how are we feeling treated around this? Do you care enough about us? We're feeling lonely. We miss you guys. I feel like you're arguing the facts, but that facts aren't what's actually causing me to bring this up again. I just feel sad. And I think the deeper issue is often how I'm feeling generally or how I'm feeling treated in the relationship.
Sheila H:
And so we might solve the surface issue if we stay there, but then the deeper issue is going to reinvent itself as whatever the next argument is, or the next topic that we're not agreeing about. So listening for feelings and identity is really getting to the deeper issue that is trying to be expressed whether or not it's even conscious sometimes.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I want to shift just a little bit to Thanks for the Feedback, to at least touch on it, because I feel like obviously one they're very linked, it feels like. I mean-
Sheila H:
They are. Yes.
Warwick F:
... inevitably...
Gary S:
Yeah. It's like The Godfather Part II. It's the sort of the sequel to the-
Warwick F:
There you go.
Gary S:
... the first.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I wonder if they had a different way of dealing with difficult conversations.
Gary S:
Yeah. For sure.
Sheila H:
They did.
Warwick F:
Maybe not-
Sheila H:
They did.
Warwick F:
... but why have them?
Sheila H:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
But I was fascinated by so often there's a lot of literature about, okay, here's how you need to give feedback, but talking about how you receive feedback, that's a different paradigm. You talk about truth, relationship, identity triggers so it's... Because yeah. I mean, as I tell my adult kids, don't assume you're going to get a good boss. I tell them most bosses are probably not going to be that good. That's just the way life is. Most bosses, they hate giving feedback and the first time you'll get feedback is, "Well, I hate giving feedback, so you're fired." "So. I mean, say what?"
Sheila H:
What?
Warwick F:
"Well, I just don't like doing it. So, here's the pink slip." It's like, "Really?" "Yeah. Sorry. But bye."
Gary S:
And even though I'm a word guy and I'm terrible at math, I'll be the numbers guy again and read some statistics again about this issue. To your point Warwick about bosses, generally some aren't good especially at this. This is actually from an article that you wrote Sheila a few years back for the Harvard Business Review. Only 36% of managers complete appraisals thoroughly and on time. That's just over one third. In one recent survey, 55% of employees said their most recent performance review had been unfair or inaccurate. And one in four said they dread such evaluations more than anything in their working lives.
Gary S:
When senior HR executives were asked about their biggest performance management challenge, 63% cited manager's inability or unwillingness to have difficult feedback discussions. That is a huge problem in the workplace. And those statistics are crucible experiences waiting to happen. Going back to the words you used in your Difficult Conversations book, it's those are hand grenades waiting to be thrown.
Sheila H:
Yeah. I think that that's right. And I think that those statistics aren't going to be better this year for us working remotely from each other, having a hard... Any goals that we set at the beginning of the year probably have either gone totally out the window or been heavily revised. And the sense of is this going to feel fair and how do we connect with each other? This is actually a current project that we're working on right now, which is to put out resources for people to have richer and more meaningful conversations as we do check ins, as we turn the corner on the year, we settle in for the next six months of working remotely.
Sheila H:
Because I think the question of can we connect and can we wrestle together with the challenges of offering honest and meaningful and fair feedback and taking in what others see, experience the impact we have on them and to sort it for what's valuable and not let it destroy us at the same time, I think is the central challenge.
Warwick F:
And I think for most human beings, receiving feedback is just so hard. I mean, you hear books saying use a three to one ratio, three to positive to one negative, but I'll hear some high performers say, "Don't tell me about any of the good stuff. I just want to know where I need to grow." Which is in my view stupid. You need to be told-
Gary S:
To use the technical business term-
Warwick F:
Exactly. Yeah.
Gary S:
... from Harvard Business School.
Sheila H:
Yup.
Gary S:
Stupid.
Warwick F:
Exactly.
Sheila H:
Stupid. Yes.
Warwick F:
You need to know the areas where you actually did poorly... where you did well at. In fact, I often find, I will remember the bad stuff, but if you ask me five minutes later, "Okay. You were just told by your family or by somebody at work, there were five things you did well, what were those five things?" "Is I really can't remember. I can't process good feedback", which is a whole other discussion which I think is fascinating.
Warwick F:
But it's just so hard. And I love these sort of truth, relationship, identity. I mean, you may believe it's not true or, "Oh. My boss is awful and they're clueless and I despise everything about them." Whether it's their lifestyle, their politics, the way they manage, they might be conventional, might not have an entrepreneurial bone in their body, and they're giving me feedback? Come on? They're clueless.
Warwick F:
Or identity. If somebody said to you, "Well, gosh Sheila. I know you think you're a pretty good professor, but actually maybe not so much." Well that strikes at the identity of who you are. It's like, "Excuse me? Really? I think if there's room for improvement, I think I'm pretty good." Or me, I've done a lot of executive coaching and, "Gee, you're a terrible executive coach." "Wow. Really? I thought I'm pretty good at listening to people and discerning." And so that's tough stuff. I mean, I read it, but to receive feedback when it is used for relationship and identity triggers and I mean... How do you deal with that? I mean, that's tough.
Sheila H:
Yeah. Well, so I think the shift for us was the shift from thinking about how to give feedback effectively to, "Well, gosh, what's so hard for all of us about receiving it?" Whether it's formal, like those dreaded reviews or informal like I got taken off the project without any conversation because my boss won't have the conversation. How do I figure out whether that even is feedback? So maybe I'll just say a couple of things about it. One is that what we found is all of us really do have three kinds of triggered reactions when we have feedback incoming, direct or indirect.
Sheila H:
And as you say, one is truth triggers. What's wrong with the feedback? Is it accurate? Does it fully understand the situation? Is it good or bad advice? Would it work? It's all about assessing the quality of the feedback itself. The second is a relationship trigger and that is everything around who gave me the feedback. Do I like them? Do I trust them? Do I think they're credible? Do I want to be like them? What are their real motives? Et cetera. And the irony here is the who looms larger than the what. The who actually... People that we find difficult and don't want to be like sometimes actually are valuable sources of learning for us. Right?
Sheila H:
They bring out our worst, it's their fault, but of course it is our worst, and annoyingly. They can sometimes have valuable things to offer. And then the third is an identity trigger and that's the story we have about who we are and also our sensitivity to feedback. What we found is that individual sensitivity can vary by up to 3000%.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Sheila H:
So for some people you're really under-sensitive and people have to really hit you over the head before you even understand that it is feedback for you, and for others, you're going to hear feedback in any little hint of anything even beyond what anybody intends. So figuring out how do I understand my own profile around feedback and how do I coach other people on how to give me feedback effectively is part of the journey of becoming better at receiving.
Warwick F:
Well, that's fascinating because for some people that may be, "Yeah. You'll need to hit me with a two-by-four before I listen." Me-
Sheila H:
Yeah. And saying, "Do hit me with the two-by-four by the way."
Warwick F:
Yeah. Me I guess I'm wired at the other end of the spectrum, because I get discerning pretty well, so you don't have to yell. You just say something softly, message received. I mean, I may agree or disagree, but I'm the other end. So yeah. Don't yell or shout. No. Don't use a two-by-four with me because it won't be very effective. But that's so valuable. But gosh. I mean this whole... I mean obviously they're very lengthy feedback and difficult conversations, but it's just... I love the phrase you used about need to grow and be accepted. If feedback was done better, it would be a game changer in our world, if people were really focused on giving it in a way that could be heard and people would receive it in a way, even if it was done poorly, "Gosh. Maybe this jerk is telling me something. I can't believe it. It's actually helpful even though I despise who he is," kind of deal.
Sheila H:
Yeah. And I think for me the most... And I know we're short on time, so maybe I'll offer the most hopeful and powerful thing that I've found personally in this journey for myself, which is that by understanding what's so hard about receiving and understanding that receiving feedback is actually a distinct leadership skill and I can get better at it, I can get better. And if I become better at it as a leader, the receiving side, then I actually become a better giver myself, I have better feedback conversations in all directions.
Sheila H:
But to me, the thing that really lands it for me is that that actually means that I don't have to wait around for the perfect mentor to show up or wait around for somebody to have time for me. I can actually be reflective about and ask for what I need from people. And we have a theory about what people do need, which is three different types of feedback. Appreciation, and that might be words, but for other people, "I don't need to hear the words. They're embarrassing and put me on the spot. But the fact that you come to me with your toughest problems makes me feel appreciated." So I need to think about what makes me feel seen and appreciated and when do I need some of that.
Sheila H:
Coaching, which is just the engine for learning. Anything designed to help me improve counts as coaching. And what do I want coaching about and who might be able to offer it to me? Not just the person above me, but people in my own team. They have coaching for me, they're just not telling me because they don't know if I want to know. And how do I ask for one thing that I might think about regularly that I could change?
Warwick F:
And that's so helpful. Don't ask for everything, ask for one thing. It's funny when I think of great leaders and it's tough in our world today to think of them. But you look back in history and as I'm sure you know Abraham Lincoln is voted pretty much every year by historians as the greatest president, and Washington's number two but they always vote for Lincoln. And you think about some of his personality characteristics, he had this ability to receive feedback better than pretty much most people I know.
Warwick F:
Like there's one time somebody said, "Well, Mr. Lincoln, I believe in this area you're an idiot." And he said, "Well, you're probably right, but tell me why." His first reaction wasn't, "How could you possibly call me Abraham Lincoln an idiot." He said, "But I'd like to learn." So he combined certainly a lot of drive and is extremely secure with a sense of humility, a sense of curiosity, a sense of willingness to learn, not just accept what was given to him. So I often think it's the character behind the leader that determines greatness. So as you're talking about how to receive feedback, here's a pretty good example of best practice of how to do it, how to do it well, how to receive it and not just instantly reject it.
Sheila H:
I love that example because it really shifts us from our instinct often, which is the feedback is incoming and I have to decide as it's coming in and do I agree with it or do I not agree with it? Is this good feedback, helpful feedback? Is it right or is it wrong? And Lincoln, your example from Abraham Lincoln really says, "I reserve the right to decide later whether I think there's something valuable here. My purpose in this conversation is just to learn more about what you see and then I can sort for myself what's valuable about it and set the rest of it aside."
Sheila H:
And that actually diffuses the tension in the conversation because it leaves me more open to learning and listening because I'm not deciding. I have to first understand it, then I can decide what I want to take from it later. And that's just gives you a ton of freedom and humility in the conversation.
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Gary S:
I can see the flight attendants are coming through the cabin to pick up our peanut bags-
Sheila H:
They're tapping their foot.
Gary S:
They're coming through the cabin to pick up our peanut bags. So the captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign and it's time to land the plane in a bit, not now yet, but in a bit. But there's something you wrote Sheila, in this article that I referred to from the Harvard Business Review back in 2013 about why feedback is hard. And to hear you describe it as a leadership skill, to receive feedback is itself a leadership skill, and then to see this reason that you explain why it's difficult, I think those things coalesce really nicely into why these can be crucible moments for people and that the difficulty of receiving feedback you wrote, what makes it hard is that it hits at the juncture of our need to grow and our need to be accepted as who we are.
Gary S:
It's almost a push me, pull you kind of situation. It can feel like it's dissonant. How do we get beyond that? How do we move beyond that? You had mentioned that there are three types of feedback. I think I heard you say appreciation and coaching. Was there a third one that we missed?
Sheila H:
There's a third one, which is evaluation.
Gary S:
Okay.
Sheila H:
And evaluation rates or ranks you. It tells you where you stand, how you're doing against some set of criteria or expectations. And I would say we need all three kinds to learn and grow, but we need different kinds at different times. And evaluation, Gary, coming back to what you were just mentioning is the most emotionally volatile. Being judged, measured, ranked, assessed, whether you're worthy enough is the one that gets everybody's attention. I think that's the one where we feel most acutely that tension between genuinely wanting to grow and get better.
Sheila H:
If you look at the happiness research, getting better at things is a big piece of what makes life satisfying. It's why people are listening to this podcast by the way. But we also deeply need to be seen and accepted and respected and loved the way we are now, and that's the tension that shows up most acutely around evaluation. So I would say, you were talking Warwick about ratios, of positive and negative, evaluation by the way it can be positive. Like that was the best episode we've ever done.
Sheila H:
That doubles as appreciation, but it is a judgment compared to something. But what I would say is that we really should be appreciating and coaching throughout the year, day in and day out in small practices and how we work together. And that actually takes some of the pressure off of at the end of the year, like so let's just get a sense where we stand. So that tells us, what do we want to work on next? What do we want to improve? What are our priorities for next year? And Carol Dweck's work on shifting from a fixed mindset, "I'm good enough or not good enough, smart enough or not smart enough," to a growth mindset, "I am learning my whole life and feedback is a way to get a sense of where I stand and what I could do and work on next as a leader," I think is part of what helps us sit with those two, wanting to grow and be accepted, and hear feedback, not as verdict or imprint, but instead as input.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, great leaders they want to learn and grow. And just as we sort of sum up, I mean, I think most of us think we're in about as divided a world as we've ever been. Maybe every generation says that, I don't know. Maybe they have for thousands of years. But it does feel that way. People are in their own tribes and they're hearing their own truth and the self-reinforcing and it's hard to solve the world's big problems if everybody thinks they're right.
Warwick F:
And there are all these camps and nobody's talking and nobody's listening. It's easy to feel hopeless amidst the division that's tearing this country and a lot of other places apart. Do you have a message of hope amidst difficult conversation and receiving feedback of how we can get out of this cycle of I'm right, you're wrong and lack of learning, lack of listening, lack of understanding, lack of awareness, lack of a bunch of things. Is there a message of hope for a world that needs hope right now?
Sheila H:
Yeah. I mean, I think you're right that it really feels like at least in the United States, our country is in a crucible moment, and that everyone is yelling about what they're right about and frustrated that they feel misunderstood or dismissed or unheard. And shifting to think about what does the other side, whatever that means to you in whatever conversation you're in, what do they feel frustrated that I don't understand about them?
Sheila H:
And what I hear is people talking, we would say talking past each other, because they're talking about two different topics, so that they're each yelling about what they're right about, but they're right about different things. I don't know if you want to include political examples, but you can think about Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter are talking about two completely different topics. Black Lives Matter is trying to say they are treated as if they don't matter and black people are disproportionately impacted by... Fill in the blank. Everything.
Sheila H:
And saying All Lives Matter is raising a different question, which is, do we feel like in saying black lives matter, dismissing the other people? Well, it's also true that all lives matter. That is true. So that's right. They're both right. But they're talking past each other. I saw a post this morning about our new Supreme Court nominee saying what did she ever do to Democrats? And Democrats would say, "Nothing. That's not the point. The point is whether we should be rushing someone through this process right now."
Sheila H:
And so that we're just talking past each other. And I think for me... And by the way, I live in a split political household myself and in a split political family, and to me it's about what do we each feel frustrated that the other doesn't understand about what matters to us. And if we can sort of flip hats to say, "Rather than me being frustrated what you don't get about me, let me focus on what you're frustrated I don't get about you," is where the conversation can happen.
Warwick F:
I almost remind... I think it was St. Francis of Assisi, he said something like, "Seek first to understand rather than be understood."
Sheila H:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I think no matter how right we may be about whatever it is, if we would actually try to understand the other point of view, I think the world would be a better place. But it's hard to do that.
Sheila H:
It's hard to do that. And social media isn't really dialogue, it's serial monologue. And that makes it harder. So we're all reacting to a conversation that we're not even in, but it's happening around us too as well.
Gary S:
Indeed.
Warwick F:
Well said.
Sheila H:
So... Yeah.
Gary S:
And I have been in the communications business long enough to know that that is the last word. And when the last word is spoken as well as that last word was spoken, it's time to land the plane for sure. I won't do that though. I would be remiss if I landed the plane before Sheila I gave you a chance to let listeners know how they can connect with you online, how they can learn more about you, your books and your services.
Sheila H:
So one of the gifts of having a very unique last name is that I'm easy to find. So Sheila Heen. You will find Triad Consulting very quickly. And we have a page called Help Yourself where there are resources. We also will have ready in November some kits that leaders can use quick prep to get ready to have more meaningful conversations with the people around them and a kit for team members to get the most out of their own review conversations. And like, "I got feedback, now what? What do I do with it?" And so those will be available through the Triad Consulting website. We also have a Facebook page of course, and I'm also on LinkedIn. So you can find me on any of those places.
Gary S:
Fabulous. Well, I'm going to do what I do at the end of every episode. And I've never said this before, but it's always very... I feel inadequate because I'm trying to sum up a conversation with someone who graduated from Harvard Business School and someone who has taught at Harvard Law School. So here goes nothing. I think there's three points listeners that you can pull from this very robust conversation that we had with Sheila Heen today about difficult conversations and the power of, and the difficulty of feedback, which is sort of a fourth kind of difficult conversation.
Gary S:
Point number one, your choices when it comes to difficult conversations are not simply to explain why you're right and why the other person is wrong or avoiding it all together. Those aren't your only two choices. There is a third way. In fact, there are multiple third ways. You can think of difficult conversations, which we call crucible conversations as an opportunity to listen, not talk. An opportunity to hear not just their audible voice, but their internal voice. Aim to understand in those difficult conversations first, not to persuade. Two focus not on blame but on contribution.
Gary S:
I'm going to say that again. Don't focus in a difficult conversation on blame, who's right, who's wrong, but on contribution. Do not assume that one person is completely responsible for the problem you're discussing, but that each of you is responsible for aspects of it. Owning your responsibility in the crisis frees up others to own their part as well. And a crisis can deescalate quickly, as Sheila pointed out, a crisis can deescalate quickly when that kind of breakthrough occurs. And then the third point on the subject of receiving feedback, and that's to remember this, that receiving feedback is in and of itself a leadership skill.
Gary S:
Don't be afraid to ask for feedback. There's three basic types, appreciation, coaching and evaluation. And here's perhaps the best tip of all. Don't ask for it all in one big lump, you can ask for things individually and you can ask with time in between them. Don't overdo it because it can be difficult to receive. It's difficult to give, it can be difficult to receive. So ask for it as it comes up, as it comes along. You don't have to wait for annual evaluations. You can ask as time goes on.
Gary S:
Thank you listener for spending your time with us on this episode of Beyond The Crucible. Warwick and I have a little favor to ask you if you've enjoyed what you've heard here, if you've found our conversation with Sheila Heen helpful, please click subscribe on the podcast app you're listening to this on right now. That will ensure that you will never miss a conversation. And we have one every week. That is just about as robust on all kinds of different subjects on how you can overcome your crucibles and find hope and healing.
Gary S:
And until the next time that we're together, remember this about crucible experiences, that they are painful, they are traumatic, they are tragic sometimes, they do change the trajectory of your life. But here's the good news, they're not the end of your story. A crucible experience is not a period on a sentence that describes your life. It's a comma. And you get to determine what you write next. And if you learn the lessons of your crucible, if you apply those lessons to your vision and you make that vision a reality, what comes after that comma can be the most rewarding chapter of your book and the most rewarding time of your life. Because where it ends up, the path it leads to, the road it puts you on is to a life of significance.
Want to be a leader known as strong, confident, honest, transparent and secure? Vulnerability can pave your way to all those adjectives — if you employ it wisely. Host Warwick Fairfax discusses with co-host Gary Schneeberger the helpful and the not-so-helpful ways you can be open about yourself. When vulnerability works, they explain, it can help your team members weather crucibles they’re going through today — and inoculate them against those yet to come.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership. Vulnerability done right, which is for a purpose focused on helping your team, is a sign of strength. It's actually a sign of inner self-confidence. Those that pretend to be, have never made a mistake, that's often a sign of insecurity. When you're secure within yourself, when you're confident within who you are, you don't mind people seeing the authentic real you that's has doubts and fears that's made mistakes.
Does that sound like the kind of leader you want to be? A leader who's strong. A leader who's self-confident, honest, open, and transparent. A leader who is secure. If so, then you're going to really enjoy today's episode.
Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of this show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership, and today's episode is all about vulnerability, but not vulnerability in a vacuum. Vulnerability as Warwick puts it, "For a purpose." Vulnerability that is designed to build community with your team, designed to build camaraderie with your team, trust, designed to take your team to the next level. So, sit back and enjoy this conversation about vulnerability with a purpose.
Vulnerability is a lot in the news. People like Brené Brown, who wrote a fantastic book, Daring Greatly, and is one of the top TEDx speakers. She talks a lot about vulnerability as a tool for creating communication with your team's trust, empathy, all of which we'll get into. But really the kind of genesis and the purpose of this is how do you actually do it? Vulnerability for a purpose, do you just talk about every dumb thing you've ever done, or I mean how do you use it in a way that's productive with your team and in leadership? Because who wants to just spew out every dumb thing they've ever done? That may make you look vulnerable, but it could also make you look stupid. And nobody wants to follow somebody that's, "Yes. Let me just tell you about every dumb mistake I've made pretty much every day for my whole life, and I'm really a clueless moron-
Right.
... who's just messes with people's lives, and really just destroys everything I ever touch. So, let me talk about that." I mean-
Right.
... that wouldn't be too helpful.
No. And there's a concept in general communication with folks about oversharing. We all have known people. Let's raise our hands. We've all been the person who's overshared sometimes in conversation, and this is a similar kind of thing, vulnerability. You can be over vulnerable and that sort of diffuses the thing that makes vulnerability a positive.
And one of the first places that Warwick and I wanted to start when we started to brainstorm talking about this was as we do a lot of times when we have these episodes where it's just Warwick and I talking, we'll go to the dictionary and we'll look up, "Hey. What does it say about forgiveness in the dictionary? What does it say about humility? What does it say about ..." So, we went to the dictionary and looked up vulnerable in the dictionary, and the dictionary, listener, was zero help because here's what the dictionary says. And I actually went to a thesaurus at dictionary.com, and here's some synonyms for vulnerable, okay?
So, we're at the outset of a podcast where we're going to talk about the benefits of vulnerability with a purpose. And this is what dictionary.com's thesaurus says are synonyms, things that mean the same as vulnerability. Defenselessness, exposed, unsafe, weak, naked, on the spot, out on a limb, sitting duck, unprotected, and my personal favorite, sucker. Those who are vulnerable according to dictionary.com are suckers, but here's the antonyms for vulnerable. The antonyms, the words that mean the opposite according to thesaurus.com, dictionary.com, guarded, protected, safe, secure, strong. That's what our definitions that we use in our day-to-day lives tell us about vulnerability, and it's fair to say, Warwick, isn't it, that we wanted to have this conversation to get people to think differently about vulnerability and to apply it differently?
Right. I mean listening to those dictionary definitions which are fascinating, most people are going to be thinking, "Well, I want to be safe. I want to be secure. I want to be strong. I don't want to be a sucker. I don't want to be weak." And so, if you were just going by the dictionary, it'd be pretty clear. Don't be vulnerable.
Right.
It doesn't make any sense, but yet I think it's beginning to change in our culture that more and more leadership thinkers are beginning to say, "Vulnerability does make sense if done right." But I guess the dictionary is still catching up with some of the thought leaders out there, so, yeah, go figure.
Now, I did find several articles, and there were a number of definitions of vulnerability or views of vulnerability that were positive. And here's one I got from an article from a magazine, online magazine called medium.com, and this will be sort of I think the jumping off point for our discussion here, and that is this. This author, Tony Fahkry, wrote this about vulnerability. "Vulnerability is an act of courage because you merge with your authentic self instead of hiding behind a façade to appease others." What's your reaction to that as a definition?
Yeah. It's really good. I mean I think of vulnerability and authenticity as very closely linked. Authenticity again is a concept in amongst thought leaders that become pretty popular in with more and more people today. They're just tired of the plastic, the unauthentic, that kind of be who you think people should be or people want you to be. It's just something that it's not really attractive anymore.
We had somebody on a podcast, Chris Tuff, who wrote a book, The Millennial Whisperer, and one of the things he said is, "More and more millennials, which are 20-somethings to early 30s, they want real. They want authentic. They want vulnerable. They want people that'll have a personal connection." And so, those are the folks that are working with mid-level leaders, senior leaders, so authenticity and vulnerability are closely linked. They want to work with somebody that's real not somebody that pretends they don't have a hair out of place. It's just like, "Yep. Everything is been good. I've just gone from success to success," and if you admit that you fail or have any fears, well, you're a loser or you're just not really a successful person. That's just a terrible image that we see over in our culture, but authenticity and vulnerability are definitely closely linked.
Well, I can say for certainty to our viewers on YouTube that I indeed don't have a hair out of place. For those of you who are just listening on an app, I'm bald, so I do not have a hair out of place. But that's only in the absolute, literal sense. Figuratively, there are plenty of figurative hairs out of place here.
It's interesting, Warwick, when we sort of hatched this idea, when you hatched this idea for the podcast, this topic, you sort of put it around the theme of vulnerability for a purpose. And as we've been discussing it, we've sort of talked about it as vulnerability for a purpose for a purpose, and that's not just being redundant for because we mistyped something. It's vulnerability for a purpose making sure that it's something that serves a purpose, but at the same time, the purpose that it serves beyond just making sure you're not sharing too much is in the context of why we're here at Beyond the Crucible. The purpose is to help people with crucible experiences.
And I want to set you up with a couple of points that we can talk about to sort of begin to unpack this for the audience, and that it's kind of a two-pronged approach to the purpose of vulnerability used on purpose. One is to be able to inoculate your team in case those crucibles come, and they will, as we've experienced, as our guests have experienced. Crucibles will come. So, one reason to be vulnerable with your team, to be vulnerable with others is to inoculate them for what's to come.
Another reason to do it is to help them overcome crucibles, move beyond the crucible, as the title of this podcast is, after those crucibles have come. So, it's kind of preventative medicine, and it's kind of treatment at the same time. Vulnerability is, isn't it?
Yeah. It's very true because we talk a lot about crucibles on this podcast, Beyond the Crucible, because that's kind of what it's all about. But when you think about it, when you've had a trauma, and we've interviewed people, a variety of traumas, whether it's been abandoned orphan, a woman naval officer whose husband died in a Top Gun training accident, the woman that was permanently disabled growing up at age 11, a variety of different traumas. And when that happens, you're going to feel very vulnerable. It's one of the most vulnerable times in life.
And so, in a business leadership or organizational context, it could be maybe corporate's going to be downsizing your unit. Maybe there'll be jobs will be on the line. Maybe there are things going on your personal life whether it's divorce or challenges with kids or maybe a mom or dad has just gotten Alzheimer's. We come to work as whole human beings. We don't sort of separate it all, so your team may be going through a whole variety of personal and professional challenges.
And so, it's important to obviously relate to them as humans, but to be vulnerable and just show them whether they're going through crucible or not, what it is like to be real and be vulnerable so that maybe when they go through something, that you might have an occasion where their work performance is going down a bit, and you're getting on them. But maybe you don't know that they're about to go through a divorce, or as I mentioned maybe they've got a sibling with a cancer or Alzheimer's. There could be all sorts of things that if you don't feel it's a safe place to share, you may not bring that to the workplace.
Right.
And so, you may be getting on them saying, "Hey, come on. The numbers aren't being met. It's holding everybody up." So, a climate of vulnerability can create somewhere where a place where you will know what's happening, and then if you know what's happening, you can actually help them and empathize. So, creating that space, that safe space of vulnerability, whether they're going through a crisis or will go through a crisis at a crucible moment is really key to have an effective team, to be honest.
And we will very quickly kind of unpack some real-world examples and ways in which folks can practice vulnerability in the right way on purpose for a purpose. But one of the things I think is so fascinating, Warwick, about vulnerability as it relates to Crucible Leadership is I don't think it's too big of a stretch to say that Crucible Leadership was borne out of your vulnerability.
And listeners who've been with us for a while, who've heard some of the earlier podcasts, have heard your story. But the pivot point of your story, and I'm going to ask you to tell it again here, the pivot point of your story when you were asked by your pastor in your church to share your crucible, you had to be vulnerable. And out of that vulnerability, some pretty incredible things happened in your church that led to Crucible Leadership.
Yeah. I mean that is true. It's ironic we're talking about vulnerability. Vulnerability in a sense is the core of the whole brand-
Right.
... book, podcast. It's kind of what it's all about. Sometimes, you forget because we do it so often. You almost take it for granted, but, yeah, I mean for listeners that may not have heard other podcasts or the story, basically in summary, I grew up in a large family media business. It had been in my family for 150 years. It had the Australian equivalent of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. It had magazines, newsprint mills, radio stations, TV stations. It was a very large company.
And I was a fifth generation, and basically, my dad died in early '87. I felt like the company wasn't being run well or run along the ideals of the founder. I was fresh back from Harvard Business School having worked on Wall Street and gone to Oxford previously. So, I launched this $2.25 billion takeover I thought for noble reasons, but it ended up not working. Family sold out. We had too much debt, and three years later, the company went into bankruptcy. So, that was sort of the genesis of the Crucible Leadership, in particular, the way back.
So, sharing that, I mean it caused me lots of pain, and the '90s were pretty difficult years, dark years, if you will. So, where that the pivot point where I realized by being vulnerable and sharing this story could help people was when the pastor of my church in Maryland, which actually 12 years ago now, a long time ago, asked me to share a sermon illustration. He was giving a sermon on the life of David and he was running away from Saul, and sort of a righteous man falsely persecuted. I said, "Well, that's not me, but I'm happy to share my story." And somehow even though there weren't any media moguls in the congregation that I know of, somehow it struck a chord with people because I was able to share what I went through, what I felt like since it's a church. A few lessons maybe God was teaching me by being vulnerable and sharing what I'd gone through and some lessons. It helped people.
So, I say, "Wow. If by sharing my story it can help people, that's worth the pain of sharing it." Frankly, after you've shared it a fair amount, it actually does get a bit easier. But, yeah, I mean it did seem to be vulnerability for a purpose. There did seem to be a purpose in sharing the story. Now, I've shared it on podcasts, blogs, and different places, so, yeah. I mean it's oftentimes people write books or they talk about, Follow me. I'm super successful," and I don't know. Sometimes, we learn more from our pain and our failures, and I think people can relate more to people that are willing to be honest about their failures and mistakes than ...
Yes, you can learn from people who are being successful, but there's something about failure and mistakes that maybe draws you in a bit closer. Maybe you even learn more in some strange way.
I've talked about this before and in conversations that we've had. It's the idea of being vulnerable for a purpose. One of the greatest purposes that I've experienced in the vulnerability of others, and that includes you, is when someone like you who had a failure that's that large, that was that confidence shattering, it's easier to be able to say, "I'm not alone." And it's not negative to say ... And you've said that people have said that to you. People have said to you, "Well, geez. My failure doesn't look so bad." And it's not an insult, and you have not taken that as an insult to you. It's empowering to share your experience. It empowers others to have had, "Okay. I'm okay that I've had that experience."
I compare that many times to the fact that I spent time in AA. I am 23 years sober as this is being recorded, and that walking into that first meeting, hearing people get up and talk about their alcoholism was enormously helpful to me because they were being vulnerable and that made me realize what I thought I was unique in, I was not, that there were other people like me. So, when a leader is open about failure, setbacks, traumas, tragedies, crucibles, that is empowering to the team, is it not?
It is. I mean one of the probably foundational principles of vulnerability is it creates connection. It creates a sense as you say, very rightly so, Gary, that you feel like, "I'm not alone," and you feel like you can relate to the person. This leader of yours is not this plastic, perfect person where the perfect family, the perfect house, the perfect life, the perfect everything. It's they're human beings who have made mistakes and have things in their life that are challenging. So, it creates a sense of connection, and it also creates the opportunity for empathy.
When somebody's willing to be vulnerable, it creates the opportunity for that leader to show empathy, to say, "Look. I'm not here judging you. I'm not here up on Mount Olympus or something looking down at your little issues. I'm here with you. I mean I've made mistakes. I've got things going on in my life." It can breed a sense of empathy and connection that is really foundational to building a team. If you don't have a sense of connection then, you don't build trust. You don't build a team. It's really the bedrock of a successful team is that sense of connection.
And you've written about this for Crucible Leadership and talked about this idea of vulnerability with a purpose, and one of the things is that is fascinating about the things that you talk about in that regard, Warwick, is the power. And we hinted at it earlier. We talked about it earlier. The power of your personal story, but the power of story in general. It moves people. It draws people in. Part of the beauty of vulnerability for a purpose is that its tied to story. When it's tied to story, it has extra impact.
What are some of the things that stories that people are vulnerable enough to tell, not over sharing but sharing in the right contexts to create community, to create comradeship with their teams? What are some of the doors that unlocks for healthy teams?
Yeah. I mean I think there's a whole series of things, and we'll get into how you decide what to share for a purpose, but by being vulnerable, one of the things that people often in organizations are often risk averse. "If I make a mistake, my career's over, so I'm going to play it safe." Well, playing it safe often means that your organization won't get to the next level, won't thrive, won't hit that next, frankly, revenue or profit target because if I just do the safe approach, maybe I'll keep my job. If I take a risk, then I could be fired or trouble will come.
So, one of the things that's helpful is be vulnerable to say, "Yeah. I've taken risks." I had this business unit that I was 20 years ago I was asked to head up. It was a small one, and maybe it didn't work out so well, or maybe even if it did, it's like, "The night, before I was ready to take the helm, I couldn't sleep. I was nervous. I couldn't eat it was just," you know?" Because that's reality, and then people will say, "Really?" "But I pushed ahead. Fortunately, I had a boss that supported me."
And so, sharing stories like that where you took risks is important, so that's sort of one category which is really important. And I think we talked about human connection. One of the other important factors is as human beings, we're all naturally we're fearful. We have doubts. We make mistakes.
Right.
That is the essence of being human. And so, if you see your boss is somebody that has fears, has doubts, and can make mistakes, again, we'll talk about, well, what do you actually do with all that? Do you share every single doubt and fear you ever had or-
Right.
We'll get into that later. But conceptually, if you feel like your boss is a human being that's fearful like you are, it's like, "Oh, wow. Then, I guess if I'm fearful, maybe I'm not a screw up. Maybe I'm not like somebody that doesn't deserve to be in this organization." It's okay. I mean one of the definitions of courage that people talk about is not so much the absence of fear but acting boldly in spite of fear.
Right.
Very few people that have acted with courage, whether it's the military or what have you, will say, "Now, were you afraid before you went to battle?" They'll say, "Of course," you know?
Right.
But yet, they went in anyway because that there was a bigger cause, something more important. They were able to get past their fears, but we all have fears. So, just risk taking, being honest about fears and mistakes, those are the kinds of vulnerability that just makes you seem human and relatable and gives people the freedom to say, "Okay. It's okay to take risks. It's okay to be fearful. It's okay to have doubts. It's okay to make mistakes." That brings a tremendous sense of freedom to your teammates, to your organization, and it creates a real ... When people have that kind of human connection, it's an incredible bond, you know?
Yeah.
People talk about in the military, which I've never been in. They talk about this bonding in the foxholes kind of thing, where you're in it together. Well, when you're under that kind of crucible under fire and any day could be your last day, I have to believe that you're going to be vulnerable. The conditions would almost force it.
Right.
And so, there's this camaraderie, and people say that they miss it when they get back to civilian life. So, that kind of connection is critical, especially when the mission is critical.
Yeah. It sounds like what you're describing, if we had to sort of put a phrase around it, is that those things in leadership that we call teachable moments. Teachable moments many times can be vulnerability moments when you have an employee, and I'll give an example from my own life. I got laid off from my second newspaper job as a reporter because ... And I'd been doing really well. This was in the early '90s, and I started to believe my own press clippings a little bit. I started to feel my oats a little bit, and I didn't work as hard as I should have.
I was the guy that would get drafted if a story needed to go on the front page and be written with what they thought was verve, they turned to me. And I was kind of I enjoyed that role. I enjoyed that attention, but it also led me to not be quite as dedicated as I should have been early in my career.
So, when it came time, when the economy turned a little bit, and the paper had to lay people off, I was an easy choice to be laid off. And I've told that story through the years to folks who have worked for me rather than just, right? There's a teachable moment will present itself where I need to tell them, "You need to kind of ratchet it up a little bit. Try a little harder. Put forth more effort. I see that you kind of slacking back a little bit. Maybe you're believing your own press."
I've told that story, and what that has done is it's shown them when they have seen me in a position of authority, they see me as someone who's gotten to that position because I went through a crucible. I went through something that didn't work out. I went through something that was, you've said many times on this show, "Your crucible can be your fault or not your fault." This was my fault. I've been through it. I came through on the other side.
And in sharing that with people who have worked for me through the years, it sort of knocked their fear off a little bit. It's helped them identify that I can identify with them. They can see in me somebody who's been where they've been. There's understanding there. There's community there, and that has, more often than not, that vulnerability is led to them far more successful than just reading them the riot act. It's led them to see, "Oh, okay. There is a way out of this. There's a way to hitch up my belt, do what I'm supposed to do, and come out on the other side successful."
Gary, that is a fantastic example of really what we're talking about. It's hard to think of a better example, which is really vulnerability for a purpose. There has to be a reason for sharing. There has to be, "Well, why are you doing it?" And clearly, there was a reason. You had a reporter who was working for you, and you wanted them to pick up their game.
And so, as I think about it, there are sort of three components of what makes a good story to share. And the first is empathy. Well, by sharing that story, you created empathy with this young reporter saying, "Okay. Here's what I've been through."
Right.
"I kind of made some mistakes. Maybe I believed my own press clippings. Okay. So, you know what it's like to be a young reporter who is working their way up." And then, you also showed understanding. You empathized because you understand the issue of what it's like, and then the third component is there's a point. There's a reason you shared that story. You wanted that reporter to kind of step up their game, and so, empathy, understanding, point.
So, as I think more generally about what makes a good and what type of story should you be vulnerable about, I think of I mean Jesus shared a lot of parables. You think of in wisdom literature, Aesop's Fables. Typically, a parable or a fable, there's one point you're trying to make in that.
Right.
I mean good ones don't have 10. It's too much for people to comprehend. There's one overarching point. You had one overarching point you were trying to make.
Right.
"You need to step up your game because here's what happened when I didn't, okay?"
Right, exactly.
And you would-
And, "If you don't, it could happen to you, too."
Right. And you weren't trying to make a direct threat or correlation, but just-
Correct.
Just FYI something you might want to consider.
Identification, not threat. Yeah.
Right, exactly. And so, the issue to think of is you might have a lot of stories to share. The question is if it's a business issue, maybe you want a new manager to take a risk and take on a new startup segment of your company. Share some stories that you went through when you did that perhaps and how you were afraid, and maybe it didn't work out. Maybe it did work out, but either way, here's what you learned. Maybe you could say, "Well, I was scared, and fortunately, I had a mentor or a boss that really helped me," or, "I had a friend of my parents or somebody that was an entrepreneur." So, you can share some tips as well as to what you went through, and we often learn so much more by story.
Now, maybe somebody comes to you with something on the personal side. Maybe they have a mom or dad that has Alzheimer's, or maybe, heaven forbid, but maybe that happened in your life. So, you could just listen and say, "Well, thanks for sharing," which would be a little cold, but if you have something that you can help to like sometimes, with things like Alzheimer's, there's no cure. There may not be a lot you can share that will help, maybe a few little tips. But just as we said earlier, just by sharing the fact that you've had a parent that has gone through it, they will feel not as alone, and they'll be more willing to share. And when they have bad days, you'll understand. You can support them and just by feeling heard and not feeling alone.
Not that you do this for that reason. It may well, they might actually perform a little better, which is not the reason, but it will be by-product.
Right.
So, it's kind of like what's the point of the story? It could be a human connection and empathetic one. It could be a business challenge, so match the story to the issue or the challenge that you're facing. Don't just willy-nilly share every dumb thing you've ever done.
Right.
That's the oversharing part.
And what comes to mind as you say that, and I hadn't thought about it until you just said all that right now, is here's the exhortation for listeners, I think. Don't gossip about yourself, right? Don't tell tales out of school about yourself. It has to have a purpose, and if you're just telling everything that's ever happened to you, every crater you've ever taken, every time you've fallen off the horse, every time you've misstepped, every time you've encountered a crucible, and it's just to get it out in the open or to make conversation, it's not effective. It's gossip. Don't gossip about yourself. Have a point to it that will help the person to whom you're speaking along their journey.
Absolutely. Well said. I mean vulnerability, it has to have a purpose. So, you might come out of a meeting with the CEO, and you might think, "This CEO is clueless. He's about to make some decisions that could be terrible for the company, and the board is insane that they still have him." So, you could just share with your team, "By the way, I think the CEO's an idiot. I don't know what's going to happen. I just thought I'd tell you." But what's the point of that?
Right.
It'll make people scared witless. There's no point. Or, "Yep. Today, we had an argument at home with my wife or husband, and, yeah, I'm kind of feeling down. And one of my kids just flunked out of school, and gee, there's another one that I don't know if he's sneaking drugs on the side, but he kind of looks kind of a little weird. And my neighbor is just awful." Just on and on and on about every bad thing that's ever happened or stuff that happened in middle school that you did some stupid stuff. If none of it has a point, it really is not helpful to share every dumb thing that's ever happened or every fear that's ever happened.
Or it may be that you may come to work thinking, "I didn't have all the information, but I have some concerns about what's happening out there in the market." Well, it's not necessarily helpful to share, "I don't know if this is founded or not, but I'm just fearful today. I wonder if our company will be there next week." It's like that's not helpful. Now, if it's one thing if you know that the markets is really taking a hit. Your company, maybe it could be challenging. Well, people know. People have talk around the water cooler, then be upfront. "Yeah, we are in for some challenging times. I think we're going to make it," or just basically the bottom line is what is going to be beneficial to your team? It can't be, "It will make me feel better if I unburden myself and say every dumb thing."
Exactly.
Will it help the listener? Will it help my team? If it's not going to help them, don't share. So, it needs a great deal of wisdom to know, yeah, you don't have to share every truthful thing you know if it's not going to help them. You need to be open with your team, but how and when is the key. So, the bottom line is it's got to be beneficial to your team. If sharing this makes you feel better, that's kind of self-centered. It's vulnerability for a purpose that needs to be focused on your team's benefit and helping them with the current situation. Sharing something that might've helped them 10 years ago but won't help them now-
Right.
... or it might help them 20 years from now, but it's not relevant. It's got to be beneficial to them and beneficial to them now.
And going back to the authenticity point, oversharing about things all the bad stuff that I've done, and I did this wrong and that wrong, that can be read very easily as trying too hard to be friends with the people on your team and not authentically. You're trying too hard. You're trying to, "Hey, look. I'm just like you. I had this experience and that, and I failed here, and I failed there." At the end of the day, you're still the leader, and the experiences that you share need to be focused exactly as you said, Warwick, need to be focused on how to help those you lead. What's the parable? What's the takeaway? What is the point of what you're saying?
And if it doesn't have a point, it can actually ... If vulnerability with a point for a purpose creates community, vulnerability without a point, without a purpose can create chaos. They can become less comfortable with you. They can become less, more fearful. They can become less confident, and that's the exact opposite of what you want to create.
Yeah. That's extremely well said. I mean think of vulnerability like anything else in leadership management. It's a tool. Vulnerability, you can't build a house with a wrench. It's useful, but you need a few other tools, hammer, saws, a bunch of things. Vulnerability can be a tool, but it's not going to solve every issue. So, just blathering on about every dumb thing you've ever done or trying to create connection by being vulnerable inauthentically can backfire. So, back to what we're saying earlier, the millennials, 20-somethings, early 30s, yes, they want you to be authentic and vulnerable, but if you out of the blue say, "Hey. By the way, when I was in high school, I did drugs," and they have the mentioned it all, hasn't come up.
Right.
But you're just sharing this to just assume in your middle age that all young people do drugs, which some do, but not all.
And you're trying to be the cool boss that they can identify with.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That will drive them nuts. They'll say, "Oh, I see through you. You're just trying to be cool and give it a break. I mean I didn't share that with you I ever did that, or I didn't do that," but, yeah. So, vulnerability just to try and be cool, that won't work. That'll be very damaging. So, it's got to have an authentic purpose. It can't be manipulated. It will not be worse than not being vulnerable, but if you try to use it as a tool to try and make yourself seem good, or I'm going to be vulnerable because that's what all the management books say these days.
Yeah.
There's got to be an authentic reason that's focused on helping them.
Right.
If it's focused on you, it will backfire big time.
Yeah. And it's important to say because there is a bit of threading the needle here. You don't want to overshare. You don't want to be over vulnerable to the point that you just made about sharing stuff that has nothing to do with what your team is going through. But at the same time, you want to be fearless enough, brave enough, helpful enough that you do do it. I mean you don't want to be too stoic and not allow yourself to release those things that can be helpful, so you've got to thread the needle.
If you're too stoic, I mean being stoic, you can blow it by being too stoic. So, you've got to find that middle ground where you're sharing, you're being vulnerable, but it's for a purpose. And in the context of what we're talking about here at Crucible Leadership, it's for a purpose to help them either meet a crucible that's to come or to get beyond a crucible that has come.
I think that's well said, and really, I think if you're in the moment, it is possible in the spiritual world, we think of kind of this inner voice, inner spirit if you will, and whatever your kind of spiritual faith perspective. You have this sort of inner intuition, inner voice that if you listen to it, it will tell you what to say at the appropriate time.
So, if somebody's you ask somebody and say, "How's it going?" and if you've created some degree of connection which is a prerequisite, they might say, "Well, yeah," or, well, you might ask them, "How are you feeling about this new job you've just been promoted to?" "Well, okay. Yeah, yeah, okay." "Really? So, tell me more. Any fears, anxieties?" Well, maybe a little bit," and so by doing a little fishing, you get them to kind of unpack a bit. It requires a bit of empathy and discernment, which would be another podcast.
So then, they share about, "Yeah. I'm actually pretty scared about this new opportunity. Everything, I mean I've been successful and all, but somehow this is different. I'm kind of nervous." Say, "Well, thank you for sharing." Obviously, honor that vulnerability, and then that's when you share, "Well, I was in your shoes 15 years ago, and I blew it," or, "First few days, first few weeks, I couldn't sleep. It was just awful." But so, that's when you know what to share because it directly relates to what they're going through and maybe you offer some tips. So, that's really the issue.
If it's a personal thing that they bring up and you can share something that's relevant, whether it's a parent who's sick, or a marital issue or kids, then that's relevant. It's relevant to them not feeling alone, so you will know that when somebody says something, yes, and I'd err on the side of being vulnerable. But it has to be you have to do soul searching. Is it relevant to what the person is bringing up, what the team is bringing up, and am I doing it for their needs or to meet my needs? That's really the two questions you want to ask is is it relevant to what's being shared, and is it to meet my needs or their needs? And if it's for their needs and it's relevant to the issue, then go ahead and share.
Yeah.
You don't need to be worried at that point because then you're okay.
And it worked out perfectly. That is the perfect place to begin our descent to land the plane on this very, very, very interesting conversation. What is a parting thought, Warwick, that you'd like to leave listeners with to sort of wrap up what we've talked about here? At the end of that, I want to tell them about an exciting new opportunity where they and their teams can actually explore some vulnerability together. But on this whole subject, what's the bottom line that you want to emphasize for them so that they have their chief takeaway?
Going back to that dictionary definition that made it seem like being vulnerable means to be weak, being a sucker as you put it from one of those definitions. I think I, we beg to disagree as I think vulnerability done right, which is for a purpose focused on helping your team, is a sign of strength. It's actually a sign of inner self-confidence. Those that pretend to be never made a mistake, that's often a sign of insecurity. When you're secure within yourself, when you're confident within who you are, you don't mind people seeing the authentic real you that's has doubts and fears, that's made mistakes.
Because back to what we've just spoken in earlier podcasts your self-worth isn't bound up with your failures and mistakes. It's bound up with who you are as a person from a faith perspective, God. We're created by God, but I think we have beauty in just an inherent humanity.
So, bottom line is I think by being vulnerable, it is a sign of security. It is a sign of self-confidence, and frankly, it helps other team members feel not alone. They can be willing to take risks of being vulnerable can actually help the organization be more successful.
Absolutely.
So, don't be afraid of it. It's not a sign of weakness. It's actually a sign of deep inner strength.
And that is the sound, listener, of the plane landing. Warwick has landed the plane perfectly, and I have some exciting news where you can practice some of this vulnerability that we've been talking about right now. At crucibleleadership.com, we have just debuted. It's just days ago when you're hearing this. We've just debuted what we're calling the Life of Significance Assessment, and what that will do, you answer a handful of questions 10, 15 if that many questions very not a long thing. Take you five minutes to finish it. You answer those questions, and what you will get back is where you are on the journey to come back from a crucible experience. If you've had a crucible experience, what you might learn from that crucible experience, what are some things you can dig into to make the most of learning how you're designed and how to cast your vision, how to make your vision a reality?
It will also tell you in addition to sort of mapping out where you are on the journey, it will give you a profile of who you are as you're taking that journey. And there's some very interesting profiles that our team has created based on the answers to the questions, individually tailored to you. One of them, maybe you're what we call a world changer. Maybe you're what we call an imagineer.
If you take this assessment at crucibleleadership.com, at the bar at the top of the page, it'll say, "Assessment," click on that and take the Life of Significance Assessment to see where you are on your journey to a life of significance, to see if you've had crucibles, to see how you've handled those crucibles, to see how you can handle those crucibles better. Lots of insight that will really help you in moving forward.
And here's where the vulnerability part comes in. Take the assessment with the team at work. If you're a leader, have your team take the assessment. If you're one member of the team, suggest to your boss, "Hey. Let's take this assessment together. Let's take an afternoon to do an off-site and talk about where we're all at on this journey to a life of significance."
As you talk about the things, the questions, that are on that assessment result will help you with vulnerability. They're prompts to help you be vulnerable for a purpose, to help you move forward, and help other people move forward. So, we encourage you to take the Life of Significance assessment at crucibleleadership.com, and then give us some feedback. There's a feedback form on the website. Send us your feedback on what you thought about the Life of Significance Assessment because really, you'll be one of the first people who will have a chance to take it, and why not use it as an opportunity to practice vulnerability with your teams?
Speaking of practicing vulnerability with your teams, here's three big takeaways, 30,000-foot to complete the airplane metaphor. 30,000-foot takeaways from Warwick and I, the discussion that we just had. Number one, Warwick ended on this point. Vulnerability is not weakness. It's not nakedness as that definition says. It does not make you a sucker as dictionary.com defined vulnerability as. It makes you human. It makes you relatable. People trust people they relate to. They trust people who are fellow travelers, who've been through the hard times and similar hard times that they've been through. Your teams will be empowered by your purposely shared vulnerability.
Second point. Think of the teachable moments. We've all said that. "Well, this is a teachable moment." Think of teachable moments as vulnerability moments. I'll say it again. Think of teachable moments that crop up in your workday, in your every day as vulnerability moments. Show empathy, understanding, and have a point, a point that will create community, that will help the person you're telling with a crucible. Whether it's a crucible that's to come, inoculating them, or it's a crucible that's already happened, helping them be treated to get beyond that crucible. And this is key when you're choosing what to share, do not gossip about yourself. That's one of the ways you make sure you have a point.
And the third point that we can share is vulnerability is a tool as Warwick very, very wisely said, but it's not going to solve every issue. Use it with care. Use it intelligently. Use it intentionally and do not forget that there are other tools in your toolbox and that employing all those tools, using all those tools are the things that are going to help you lead your team to the best place that you can lead your team.
Well, this has been a great discussion, Warwick, and I want to thank you, listener, for spending time with us. As I said, you can go to crucibleleadership.com to find out more about Crucible Leadership. You can sign up there for Warwick's regular email updates on what's going on at Crucible Leadership. I'm going to let you say this, Warwick. I mean I'll ask you this. It's a pretty exciting time at Crucible Leadership right now, isn't it?
Oh, it is. I mean really between the assessment and the book that's coming out, Crucible Leadership, next year. I mean the podcast, a lot of super exciting things are happening. Absolutely.
Yeah. Speaking of the baldness I talked about earlier, if I had hair, it would be on fire because we're working hard at Crucible Leadership for you.
Well said.
So, drop by crucibleleadership.com. Sign up for the regular updates on what's going on, and until the next time that we're together on Beyond the Crucible, remember this. That your crucible experiences are painful. They can be traumatic. You've heard the discussions on this very podcast of people who have gone through truly traumatic, painful, life changing things, but the good news. They're not the end of your story. There's hope beyond the crucible. There is healing beyond the crucible, and that's what we're here for.
So, remember that as painful as it is right now, it's not the end of your story. As we've said before, a crucible is not a period at the end of the sentence that is your life. It's a comma, and you get to write what comes after that. And what can come after that if you learn the lessons of your crucible and you apply them in your life, if you're vulnerable enough with yourself to learn the lessons that that crucible is trying to teach you, the next chapter of your life can be the most rewarding chapter of your life. And the reason that that is true is because that chapter leads you to a life of significance.
Perfectionism is a struggle so many of us have. No matter what we do, it seems like it is not good enough. Other people might say our work was great, that dish came out really well, we played amazingly in that We hear in our culture that we need to be authentic, even vulnerable. But what does that mean, and can you be authentic and vulnerable, even after being broken, and still be successful?
For leaders, we feel vulnerability is a sign of weakness. We fear our team will see our insecurities and respect us less. But the reverse is true. The next generation of leaders on our team, certainly millennial leaders, want to follow authentic and vulnerable leaders. But how do we do this? In particular, how do we practice vulnerability in a way that helps our team and does not sabotage our organization’s success or our personal success?
Here are some keys to vulnerability as a leader. The overarching principle is we need to be vulnerable for a purpose.
Put Away Fear
Yes it is possible by being vulnerable we will say something that our team and those around us will feel is a bit weird or our leadership image armor might seem a bit tarnished. But this will be more than counterbalanced by our team’s gratitude about our being real. Our team will see that we have the courage to admit that we can be fearful and uncertain too.
Vulnerability for a Purpose
Being vulnerable might make us think that we have to share every dumb thing we’ve ever done. Maybe we crashed our dad’s car in high school, or worse, we might have been drinking while driving. Perhaps our marriage broke up, and we feel it was pretty much our fault. Or we made some terrible business or career decision. Maybe we were not the boss we believe we should have been. There are many areas of fear, doubt and mistakes we can share. So how do we decide what if anything to share?
Great leaders know that our team learns more through parables and stories than lectures. Think about the great teachers. We can think of Greek mythology and Greek heroes and the tales of heroism and folly. Think of how Jesus taught mostly in parables and stories. In wisdom literature, as well stories in general such as Aesop’s Fables, there was typically a point. Often a great story has one key point the author wants to make. So think of what you are trying to teach or relate to your team. What story can you tell that will really reinforce your message?
Perhaps it is about taking risk. Perhaps you could share a story of when you took a risk as the head of a small business unit, early in your career. It might have failed, producing one lesson. You might say, “I failed, but you have to be willing to fail in order to succeed.” You might share how the first few days as head of that business unit, you were so scared. Afraid that if you blew this golden opportunity that your career would be history. Perhaps it could be about failure when you were younger. Perhaps you did not make your high school basketball team when your buddies did. Maybe you kept trying and made the team the next year. Or perhaps you did not want to fail again, so you never tried out for the team the rest of high school. You could say, “In hindsight my fear of failure kept me back.” And then you could tell your team, “I try never to be so afraid, that I make the mistake of not trying again.”
The key thought is, what point are you trying to make and which story would best illustrate your point? In a sense, which fable, which morality tale – though in this case, they are true stories – will best fit the purpose of your story?
Vulnerability gives others the freedom to be vulnerable, too
By being vulnerable, by willing to admit that you have made mistakes and have been fearful, you give others and in particular your team the freedom to also be vulnerable. If you are the leader of an organization, this willingness to be vulnerable can have a ripple effect through the company. Your senior leaders may follow your lead and be vulnerable with their teams. You as the leader set the tone, which can be to set a vulnerable empathetic tone or one of the fake strong armor, masking a fearful and insecure inside.
Vulnerability gives others the freedom to take risks
If you admit that you have made mistakes and that mistakes are OK, you give your team the freedom to take risks and try bold new adventures. Yes, there has to be a vetting process for new ventures, but if you encourage a culture of vulnerability and risk taking, then more good ideas will come to the fore, some of which could be game changers for the organization.
Vulnerability can create connection
By being vulnerable, not only will your team learn that you have made mistakes too, but in doing so you will create a sense of connection. They are more likely to share their own mistakes and fears, which creates the opportunity for you to listen, console and advise. Because you are coming from the space of leading alongside them, not above them. You are saying that you too made mistakes and have been fearful. The question is not whether you have made mistakes and have been fearful. The question is what you are going to do moving forward. Are you going to learn the lessons of your mistakes? How will you overcome your fears? Just admitting your fears can be helpful in overcoming them.
Vulnerability can be a tremendous leadership tool. Take the leap of faith. Be willing for your team to see who you are warts and all, mistakes and fears and all. You have to be pretty secure to be vulnerable and talk about your mistakes and fears. You just might find by being vulnerable, your team will respect you more, be more willing to follow you, and you and your team might be more successful. Being vulnerable for a purpose could be the key to your success and your team’s success.
Reflection
How could being vulnerable help your leadership with your team?
What are the chances that by being vulnerable, that your team will respect you more and be more willing to follow you?
Which story could you share that would most help your team?
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
At 19, Ryan Campbell became the youngest pilot to fly solo around the world. Two years later, a horrific plane crash threatened more than the dream he birthed at 6 to make a life and a living streaking through the skies. Left a paraplegic after the accident, he fought back physically and emotionally to walk — and hope — again. Today, he’s an in-demand motivational speaker who inspires audiences to build a mindset toolbox to conquer their crucibles.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome everyone to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I'm Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the podcast and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership. And we're welcoming you into a podcast that is about a subject that you probably know a little bit about if you've tuned in, and that is crucible experiences. We define crucible experiences as those things in your life that are painful, traumatic, upsetting. They can change the trajectory of your lives, failures and setbacks and things that happen to you, and sometimes things that you yourself set into motion. But the reason that we talk about them here on Beyond the Crucible is not sort of have a powwow where we just sort of tell war stories. The idea of talking about them is to highlight folks like our guest today who have been through crucibles and have bounced back from their crucibles. And now they're on the other side, living lives of significance.
Gary S:
And we talk about those individuals and we interview those individuals to give you hope on your road to healing, on your own road to a life of significance. And with me as always, I would not be here were he not here is Warwick Fairfax, who is the founder of Crucible Leadership and the host of the show. Warwick, we've got a great one today and not only because the only American accent on the show today is going to be mine.
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely very much. Looking forward to that.
Gary S:
That listener was a reference to our guest Ryan Campbell, who when he speaks, you will realize is like Warwick, Australian, but here's a little bit more about Ryan. Few people have encountered the extreme polar opposites of success and tragedy that Ryan has, let alone by the age of 26. As the youngest person to fly solo around the world, Ryan's life changed in an instant following a very serious light plane crash. He survived against all odds and was admitted to a spinal rehabilitation ward as a complete paraplegic with no movement from the waist down. Ryan proved his mental fortitude as a record breaking pilot, but demonstrated his mastery by learning to walk again and fighting his way back into the sky. The gamut of human experience led Ryan to develop his mindset toolbox and the three step checklist to navigating change, ways of thinking that allow individuals and organizations to overcome adversity, navigate change, and build a better future. That's really what we're all about at Crucible Leadership. So take it away, Warwick.
Warwick Fairfax:
Ryan, it's so great to have you on the podcast and love your story and your book Born to Fly. But before we get into your crucible and some of the amazing things you've done in flying, tell us a bit about Ryan Campbell, how you grew up, your family. Tell us a bit about yeah, yourself growing up in Australia.
Ryan Campbell:
Good afternoon gentlemen. Thanks Warwick. I explain myself as just a normal Aussie kid. Any more laid back, I'd be lying down. That's my favorite overused line. I grew up not in a poor family, but not in a rich family, just a standard middle-class Australian establishment. We originated on a farm property and then we moved down to the beach when I was about six years old. And I grew up by the salty clear blue water and the golden beachy sands, which I now miss. But my dad was a truck driver. He was a farmer and he was a local milk man. And my mom was a stay at home mom.
Ryan Campbell:
We had a family of five, two older brothers and a family I suppose you could say much larger than that also you know, grandparents and aunties and uncles. And just an amazing upbringing, which the older I get, the more I value and appreciate. So a really cool upbringing. I was a young kid with a whole bunch of ideas that mom and dad normally rolled their eyes at. And many of those ideas, just drifted away into the atmosphere but a few of them landed and resulted in some wild adventures, not just for myself and then my family, but for whole bunch of people who were in involved in our little escapades. So it's just a normal as a kid is my favorite way to talk about who I am.
Warwick Fairfax:
So, where did your sense of adventure come from? Was it your mom, dad, or relatives? Because you're somebody that just likes doing things that other people don't normally do.
Ryan Campbell:
I think the problem lies within me to be honest.
Warwick Fairfax:
No problem.
Ryan Campbell:
I have a family who love travel, but we love to kind of see the world and a very outside of the box thinking family. But I'm definitely the first person and still the only person who's really ventured out on anything super left of field like I did and continue to do. I've always been a very impatient kid. I always wanted more. I remember when I was a young kid, I used to unpack the dishwasher and ask for chores before school. So mum could save some money for me so I could pocket money and buy things. And I just when I wanted something, it didn't matter what it was, a piece of technology or an ice cream or a new CD or whatever. I was that kid who just did not let go. It didn't matter whether my parents knew I would never use the product when it arrived in my hands, but I've always been someone who is very fixated on a goal. And that I think in itself has led to the adventures that we had.
Warwick Fairfax:
So I understand that you have wanted to fly or being fascinated by flying at the various earliest age. What was your first memories of this passion for flying?
Ryan Campbell:
I think so the first memory has attached to it a really cool business story to give you a little bit of an idea of my family. So my dad was a milkman, as I said, mum was a stay at home mom. We didn't have a lot of money, but we worked for a company in Australia where they had an incentive program every year. Now, if we sold a certain amount of berry juice products, we would get a free to take it overseas. So I remember at six years old in a family that had never set foot outside of Australia, my parents bought a lot of juice and I'm talking, we filled that store room with long life apple juice and orange juice. And what that led to was the first overseas trip to Vanuatu an Island in the Pacific when I was six years old. And we went on a business trip where we swam in the pool and they went to their little work events for a week and it was a amazing getaway.
Ryan Campbell:
And it was the only way my parents could afford to go overseas because they then come home from the holiday and spend the next six months selling orange juice to anyone with a thirst to pay for that adventure. So it was on that first overseas trip, that was actually to be the first of four. So we're really lucky young kids to get to travel. The first of four of these incentive trips that I climbed into a Boeing 737. And we took off and being the youngest and the cutest of the three, which I always say we, they put me by the window. I got the window seat and I sat there and watched Sydney appear in the window of that aircraft as we took off and everything about the experience, I was just blown away by it. It was just simply magic to me. The fact that everyone in Sydney, has a red roof on their house or just the size of Sydney, or honestly the biggest moment was the fact that we went through clouds.
Ryan Campbell:
At six years old, I didn't even believe he could reach the clouds, let alone do so over Sydney in an airplane. And prior to September 11, which shows how old I am. We were invited up to the cockpit and I walked up there with both my brothers and I followed in trail and we met the pilots and we looked at the buttons and the switches. And from that point on, if honestly Warwick and you laugh at this being an Aussie, but I would always tell people three things from when I was six years old. One is that I wanted to be a jumbo jet pilot. I wanted to fly for Qantas. That was great. That was a solid dream that lasted. The second was that I wanted to own a Subaru WRX, which was a big dream for a six year old. The third, for some reason I wanted to live in Canberra. I don't know whether it was a small town, just kind of like saw the glistening lights and the shopping centers, but I don't know, I would not live in Canberra if you paid me now, but-
Warwick Fairfax:
No. It's a pretty quiet place for capital city. There's not much going on.
Ryan Campbell:
It definitely is. So, I was a six year old kid with three big dreams. And the one that truly lasted was this discovery of passion and that was aviation. And it honestly has taken me and provided the highest experiences of my life, the best, the most positive experiences. But it's also taken me to the deepest and the darkest places. So it really has provided a roller coaster ride in a short period of time.
Warwick Fairfax:
So after that trip to Vanuatu and sitting in the cockpit and having this passion for flying, you told your mum and dad, "Okay, I want to be a pilot." What was their reaction to this dream of this six year old?
Ryan Campbell:
Little did I know when I was six that my granddad had actually, he'd just passed away, but he had been a pilot and not professionally, but he'd been a private pilot. Little did I know my dad actually wanted to learn to fly, he'd always wanted to learn since he was a kid. Little do I know my uncle who didn't have a lot to do with was a commercial pilot and owned a joy flight business, in Merimbula the little town I grew up on the South Coast of Australia there. And little did I know all of that, which just makes me believe that aviation's in my blood. So my family probably didn't take it as a shock. And as we grew older, that dream, as I said really was set in stone. It was getting to 14 years old and saying, "Alright, I need a plan. How am I going to work through school? And learn to fly."
Ryan Campbell:
Well, common sense at that point for 14 year old kid said, "You know what? You're going to need two things. You're going to need money, a lot of it. And you're going to need at least a driver's license before they'll let you fly an airplane." I was incorrect on one of those fronts. I definitely needed money, but I was reading the local newspaper when I was 14. And I read an article about a kid who flew solo in an airplane on his own for the very first time on the day he turned 15. That was the first day he was legally allowed. And here I am at 14, not very good at math, but I was like, "I don't have very long if he can do it. Why can't I?" Well, that led to an afterschool job.
Ryan Campbell:
And that led to a weekend job. And it led to about, what was I earning? $50 to wash a truck and 45 at the supermarket. So I was earning around about, I think, $190 a fortnight or every two weeks and a flying lesson for an hour was 180. So I actually funded my way through flight training throughout school. I went solo much to my mum's stress levels, went through the roof. But I went solo on my 15th birthday, just like this kid in the article. And I had discovered what I could do with a goal and a little bit of hard work. And I ignited this passion, not just to fly more, but to do everything I could at the youngest possible age. And the adventure just, it sped up from there.
Warwick Fairfax:
That's amazing. So you have all this sort of unknown, maybe flying genes in there, or it's just amazing how these things happen. So you had this dream of flying, when did this idea to fly around the world, while you were still a teenager, but what point did that dream started to form?
Ryan Campbell:
So I'd flown solo on my 15th birthday. When I was 16, I turned 16 I passed a flight test that allow me to take friends and family flying in a restricted area. I wasn't 17 yet, so I didn't have a driver's license. I couldn't drive a car on my own. So all my buddies at school who were older than me, we cut a deal with them. And we said, "All right, you drive me from school to the airport. After school, I'll take you for a fly, but you've got to drop me home." So that was my deal throughout when I was when I was 16, sorry. When I was 17, I had a private pilot's license. And when I was 18, I had a commercial. So I really pushed for whatever I could every time I become a year older. It was at 17 that I read an article again, I should've stop reading articles.
Ryan Campbell:
But I read an article on a kid who was American 23 years old who'd broken the world record for the youngest person to fly solo around the world. And we're talking 2008. We're talking the prior world record being 37. So there really was no age record. And we're talking a time where more people had gone to space and flying solo around the world. So not a very common thing to take place. Well, here I was at 17, he was 23. And again, not very good at math. I knew I had six years to pull this off and I decided I wanted to find out more, but I kept it a secret.
Ryan Campbell:
So I did what any wannabe 17 year old teenager would do and I Googled how to fly solo around the world. And I found a website called earthrounders.com and I printed off all the information. I highlighted all the important parts and I hid it in my desk. I didn't want my mom, my dad, my brothers, I didn't want anyone to find it. I didn't want anyone to think that I was silly enough to believe this was possible.
Warwick Fairfax:
So were you afraid that they were going to try and talk you out of it or something?
Ryan Campbell:
Or judge me or laugh at me and I have the most supportive family in the world. So it was a very irrational fear, but I thought they would potentially just laugh and get "What is this kid on?" You know, like this is wild. But I read those articles over and over again. And there wasn't a lot to read given that not many people had actually done this. I got to the point where I wanted to know more. I wanted to know more than that those articles, but what do you do at that point? Now my mom and dad couldn't help me. So I decided I'd contact a gentleman I'm sure you know to some degree, Dick Smith, an Australian entrepreneur, a businessman, aviation adventure, previous around the world, pilot. I decided I'd contact Dick Smith and I thought well, he has the power to help me, he has the knowledge and he has some of the answers. And if he laughs at me and this doesn't happen, I don't cross paths with Dick Smith very often. So I'm not going to feel judged.
Warwick Fairfax:
And that's sort of amazing because Dick Smith for U.S audience, he has an electronic store chain kind of like Best Buy in a sense in the U.S so I mean, it's kind of everywhere. So he's very successful, see, you reached out to Dick Smith, he's a busy guy, very successful and he responded.
Ryan Campbell:
He did and-
Warwick Fairfax:
Which is so amazing.
Ryan Campbell:
My mum said "How did you do that when you were 17?" And I said, "I just Googled Dick Smith's email address." And I hate to tell anyone that, but I found five and I sent an email out to all five. And I said, "Dear D|ick Smith. My name is Ryan Campbell, I've got 200 hours and I want to be the youngest person." I read that email now and just cringe. And he responded. And he said to me, "Ryan, he said, what you want to do is dangerous. It's very risky. It's hard. It's never been done before." And he listed all these bad elements to the adventure. But at the end he said a few simple words, and this was all about it. He said, "But it can be done, go and find yourself a mentor. And if you find a mentor who tells me that you're the guy for the job, I'll support you."
Ryan Campbell:
So I took that same email that I sent to Dick and I crossed out Dear Dick and I wrote Dear Ken. And I sent it to a guy called Ken. And he was the second person to ever hear about this adventure. He'd flown around the world with another pilot. He was an Australian based in a little town called Bendigo. He agreed to be my mentor. So I went back to Dick Smith. All of a sudden I had a team of three. Everything was very exciting until I realized I had not told or asked my mom and dad yet, at 17 years old. So we went down the road of asking mom and dad, I washed the dishes one night, which I think helped. And I said to mom and dad, "Hey, what would you think if I said that maybe potentially one day I might want to fly a small airplane solo around the world?"
Ryan Campbell:
And dad said, "Oh, you'd see some amazing things." And mom said, "Oh, wouldn't that just be a phenomenal experience?" And I thought here they are my parents going, here's another idea this kid's got. Yeah. Well then I sat the folder of emails down in front of them from Dick Smith. Literally a name they'd grown up with and all of a sudden it wasn't a joke. Well, that started the two year planning, training, fundraising, adventure, where I didn't just plan and train and then prepare as a pilot. But we fundraised a quarter of a million dollars on a laptop computer, the same laptop that would go around the world to write the blogs, the same laptop that we would write the book on. And we pulled together a team from literally myself to what became a massive team at an industry who supported what was a history making adventure. So a really long two years, lots of fundraising, lots of lessons, lots of growing up for a young kid.
Warwick Fairfax:
But to raise 250,000 being at age 17 is amazing. Obviously, your parents might've be nervous, but they were supportive. You had a plan. I mean, not too many 17 year olds would come up with a plan and have the courage to just write to Dick Smith and the wisdom to seek mentors when it was suggested. I mean, you pursued a goal just all out, but with a lot of wisdom, it was sort of courage and wisdom. I mean, as you reflect back, I know there's a lot of lessons in your life, but those lessons leading up to that round the world flight, they are some key lessons for people and how you approached it.
Ryan Campbell:
Absolutely. And for me, I always say courage and commitment, courage to take it on, commitment to see it through. And I learnt so many lessons the hard way, and we could talk for days about the little moments that I learned and I was a kid who couldn't make his bed. And I was trying to contact the largest companies in the world through these very average sponsorship proposals where I'd stolen their logo, full copyrights, straight off the internet. And I started off and had to refine the process to find success. And we did find success from a deal with 60 Minutes and all sorts of large media outlets around the world. And what resulted, not just in a successful adventure, but a book deal. And it was a phenomenal transformational time for a young kid to learn and grow even before we took off to fly around the world. I mean, that two years was I think that more of the story lies in that two years than it does in the 70 days of circumnavigating the globe.
Warwick Fairfax:
And that was 2015 was it? When did the flight happen?
Ryan Campbell:
That was 2013.
Warwick Fairfax:
2013. Okay. Got it. And so that was, how long did it take to fly around the world did you say?
Ryan Campbell:
So I climbed into a rented single engine airplane, and then it was a full seat piston powered propeller plane. And I had 160 gallons of fuel in the cockpit with me and a big bag. And we could fly this airplane up to 16 and a half hours nonstop, and that's what I needed to cross all these big ocean legs. And I took off at 19 years of age after that two years of planning, we flew 24,000 nautical miles to 35 stops in 15 countries. I took off from Wollongong, just South of Sydney, Australia on the East Coast. And I pointed that airplane Northeast, purely over the Pacific ocean. And I did not stop until I made it to North America. I had about five legs to get across the Pacific alone, the longest being Hawaii to California, 15 hours nonstop, literally sitting in my little seat. So a very long trip in a very...
Warwick Fairfax:
Not a lot of margin for error on that one, if you've...
Ryan Campbell:
Very little margin for error. There's some stories from that leg for sure.
Warwick Fairfax:
So you did this remarkable journey in 2013 and that led to, I think the book you wrote Born to Fly was that written after that, but before?
Ryan Campbell:
Yeah. The way that I explain the stories when we deliver keynotes is I tell stories, not from an ego point of view, I hate nothing more than ego or manufactured drama in life. And we tell these stories to give people a little bit of an idea of how good life was at this point. So around the world flight ended, we were on 60 Minutes. I was invited to meet the Royals and named one of Australia's 50 greatest explorers. And I wrote a book that my nan can tell you every page number of every spelling mistake in that book, and that's not a joke. And we shared the story and the story spread and life was great. We did so many wonderful things that Australia Day, Ambassador roles, and just had the opportunity to see a story which originated as a silly idea in a 17 year old kid's head spread and impact the world. Everyone from six year old kids who wanted to maybe fly one day like I did originally through to ex World War II Spitfire pilots who were writing me letters, just absolutely blown away by the story.
Ryan Campbell:
Yeah, my heroes of the world were reaching out to me. So my life was amazing. I was on the Australian speaking circuit and I was flying for a living and speaking, just to kind of subsidize the terrible pay that we kept paid as pilots. And I could not argue with where I was at in life. And then it all changed.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. So life was going so well, you were talking about courage, commitment, go for your dreams. Anything's possible, which is a great message. But then for whatever reason, the world or fate gave you another message, which you weren't planning on. Didn't really want to talk about that. I guess it's 2015, that kind of that fateful day, what happened?
Ryan Campbell:
Well, I was my six year old self wanted to not only fly jumbo jet, but my dream was to fly for Qantas, the Australian airline.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah.
Ryan Campbell:
Following a speaking gig in Canberra, believe it or not. I was offered a job with Qantas Link, our regional Qantas airline. And I turned it down because my dream was to fly Spitfires. I wanted to fly World War II fighters. That was my dream. And I wasn't going to gain the experience I needed to fly those rare airplanes through flying for an airline. Plus I was 20, 21. I needed to go and live a little bit more. And I turned down the job with the airline and I took a job flying Vintage airplanes to build up the experience I needed and just to have a great, exciting living. So my job was to fly a biplane that was built in the 1930s up and down the coast of Australia and do some aerobatics and a beautiful machine, very old, but beautiful.
Ryan Campbell:
My job was to take one passenger at a time flying and it was simple. But it was a very pleasurable job. And on the 28th of December 2015, I got up and went to work just like any other day, no oceans to cross no records to break. And we climbed into that airplane. I had a gentleman in the front with me and I was sitting behind him. He was also a pilot, very, very nice gentleman. And we started the airplane. You actually have to grab the propeller and spin the propeller with your hands and start it by hands. It was very old technology and we taxi to the end of the runway. We lined up on these short grass airstrip, nice and early in the morning to take off and go and look at the beach. And I pushed the power forward, the airplane performed beautifully.
Ryan Campbell:
And we lifted off the ground, the runway and the fence at the end of the runway disappeared beneath the nose, and straightaway at about 150 feet over the top of trees the engine failed. And we had a partial engine failure and within three seconds, despite everything that I could do, I don't know what I ever could have done different. We had nowhere to go and we ended up in what was a horrific plane crash. It's just not explainable how bad it was. And I was cut from the wreckage, placed into a helicopter and flown to hospital, but I was the only survivor.
Warwick Fairfax:
Oh my gosh.
Ryan Campbell:
I was taken to hospital in Brisbane. I was operated on immediately. I had shredded facial bones, fibrates and my ankle was almost removed. My right ankle was shattered and I was operated on immediately. And I was awake from the accident. And most of the ordeal blacked out from the pain and the impact for some minutes here and there. But overall, I remember every element of it. And I woke up in the recovery ward with no movement or feeling from my waist down. I was a complete paraplegic.
Warwick Fairfax:
So obviously a lot's going through your mind. I mean, you're an experienced pilot. Even at that age, you're thinking, well, obviously I'm not a pilot, but if you're a 100 feet up, the engine fails. You've got no time to think of anything or do anything and even if you could, it sounds like there was nothing you could do. Was that like well, certainly it wasn't pilot error. There's nothing I could have done.
Ryan Campbell:
It was the hardest part of this entire, especially with the outcome of the accident. The hardest part of this entire journey for me has been coming to mental grips with the outcome. What happened, why it happened, what could have been done, what was done and analyzing those number of seconds. And I know in my heart of heart that we made the best decisions on the day in that moment, flying what we were flying. It was just, if that engine had a failed 10 seconds earlier, or 20 seconds later, we would have been okay, but the devil himself pressed the button at that moment for me. And I don't know, put me in a simulator and give me that a 100 times again, I don't know what I could have done differently with all the elements that come into play when we consider an engine failure on takeoff, specially in 1930s technology.
Ryan Campbell:
And do I regret being in the airplane that day? No. Do I regret getting out of bed and not sleeping in? No. Do I regret not having a flat tire and canceling that flight? No, I don't. We made the best decisions to be there that day and I don't know what I could have done different. And that's my only way that I can come to grips with being the one who made it out as opposed to the one who didn't.
Warwick Fairfax:
So obviously it goes through that, people talk about survivor guilt and all that. Why was it me? And that's probably one thing. Not that it's fair, but we're human. I mean, logically you knew there's nothing you could have done. Yes, it's like, "Well, I could have given the engine another once over." I mean, even if you'd done that, probably it wouldn't have been that obvious without, I don't know what pulling every part of the engine apart, even then you probably couldn't have found...
Ryan Campbell:
And it was, they pulled it all apart and we don't know. And it could be anything from a mud wasp to a little bit of water. We just don't have the answers.
Warwick Fairfax:
So logically, there's nothing you could have done, but because we're emotional beings, did it take a while for you to accept the fact there was nothing he could do? Your brain said, "I did everything I could." But emotionally were you kind of beating yourself up a bit, or?
Ryan Campbell:
I will always have that element in my life. I always will. That doesn't go away with time. It gets easier with time. You know, I do not blame myself and if I did, I wouldn't be here. I couldn't live with that. I however, live with the struggle and the triggers that will always come from that PTSD, whatever you want to call it. I will have that forever. And that's been hard.
Warwick Fairfax:
And you have to go through that to fully understand that kind of trauma. So people who have gone through those sorts of experiences probably could understand better, but how did you get beyond that? Because intellectually, it sounds like you came to terms with that pretty quickly because you're a pilot, you get it, you understood there was no room for error. It was bad luck. As you said 10 seconds earlier, at 20 seconds later, it would have been radically different. But how did you find a way to bounce back from that experience and live a positive life rather than, the alternative is just to say, "Well, that adventurous free spirited Ryan Campbell is no more. I'm just going to be safe, cautious just." Not do much at all.
Gary S:
And I'm going to jump in before you answer that question, Ryan, because you told me something when we talked before we started recording the show that I think is a universal truth for anyone who's gone through a crucible. Our listeners would know well. You probably know well, Ryan being from Australia, the crucible that Warwick went through the takeover of the family media business that failed. Takeover the slipping of the company after 150 years out of the family's hands at 2.25 billion loss. Not at all the same thing as the physical trauma that you went through, but emotionally speaking, what could I have done differently? What can I learn? How do I bounce back? Those experiences are universal with crucibles. And what you told me when we talked that speaks to Warwick's question about how you got through it. You said this to me, "We find the tools in our low points to power better times." And I just wanted to kind of get that out there, that perspective out there, because I think our listeners will definitely identify with that as you answer the question, how did you do it?
Ryan Campbell:
100% and I am really big on this idea of tools and building a mindset toolbox. I'm really big on adversity being an opportunity. Adversity alone is adversity, but adversity with the right tools to utilize it is opportunity. It's simple as that. At 21 years old, I was lying in that hospital bed, going through what you're talking about Warwick, this constant reflection of what happened. Trying to get my memory back, trying to pull the pieces together, trying to work with the right teams of people around me to say, "Okay, what happened? And get answers."
Ryan Campbell:
And it was a really long process that honestly it's not as prevalent in my day to day life now almost five years on. But I'll tell you what it lasted many years. And it's been very hard and there are times where it comes back up again. When we look at that time in hospital, it was so hard in the beginning just to exist. For me I would always tell people that I was at maximum capacity. You could have walked in and told me that I'd lost a family member, or you could have chopped off my leg or from a pain and a mental point of view, physical and mental. I was at capacity. You couldn't have done anything more to me to make it any worse.
Ryan Campbell:
But we started to crawl out of that hole with the real sink or swim mentality. I remember sitting next to an Australian. I had many people from Alan Jones and all these incredible Australians that the U.S audience might not be too familiar with, but trust me when I say incredible, incredible humans spending a lot of time with me at hospital. I remember sitting across from Paul de Gelder an Australian Navy clearance diver who lost his arm and leg in a shark attack in Sydney Harbour.
Ryan Campbell:
And he looked at me and he said, "Sink or swim." Now I'd spend an hour and a half with an ex Australian Wallabies coach. I had been to every psychologist known to man and ended up telling them how they felt. You know, I can't tell you how much help I had, but those three words changed everything for me. Because when I looked at Paul, I knew that at one point in his life, he had to actually swim and he chose to swim. And if we look at this crossroad we come to when we experience adversity or change challenge or crisis in our life, we have to make a choice. It's up to us. A lot of tough love is needed. A lot of harden up is needed. We have to sit back. We have to make our own decision to sink or swim. Sinking is a very long and slippery slope to suicide.
Ryan Campbell:
And I am really blunt about that because I'm really big on young people losing their mental battle. Swimming is the journey that we take to climb back up. To climb the mountain, that it's ahead of us to get out of where we are to end up in a better place, physically and mentally. And if it's just one step at a time, that's okay. When I was in hospital, I was battling the mental aspect of the accident. What happened, why, what could have been done differently? I was battling my physical state. I had no movement from my waist down, no feeling. My bodily functions had disappeared. I had no control. I was a newborn baby in a hospital. My dignity was left at the door when they wheeled me in. And I spent the next six months in that spinal rehabilitation ward determined to not walk, but fly and walking was merely a stepping stone on the way back to flying. And that was the end of the conversation for me.
Ryan Campbell:
I was naive. And I thought honestly for that first 12 months that I was just going to get better. I mean, how naive can you be? I'd flown around the world. I was like, "I'm going to be fine." And whilst I saw progress and I released a video on this yesterday, and I talked about progress being the antidote to stress induced, or to change induce stress and how progress even just a little bit of progress everyday towards our end goal provides a purpose to the pain. So for that first 12 months, especially that first six months in hospital, I went from a complete paraplegic with no movement or feeling from the waist down. A wheelchair that was custom built for my body to a human who was walking albeit I look like I've just sunk a bottle of Tennessee whiskey, but walking.
Ryan Campbell:
And that was a very long journey of pain but with a lot of progress, I would see a twitch for muscle. A little bit of sensation come back on some area of my lower body. All of these things were happening every day. When I got to that 12 month point where my recovery started to plateau, that lack of repair, that reduced rate of repair become one of the biggest challenges of my life, because now it wasn't about "Okay, just keep doing what you're doing. You are going to be okay." It was like, "Okay, this is it. This is where I'm going to get to, this is my new normal. We're going to have to start to get used to it, learn how to maintain it. And now I'm going to have to begin to adapt in my day to day routines to make sure that I can do as much of what I did in my previous life with these new injuries."
Ryan Campbell:
And I still have a whole bunch of things wrong with me, a long list of things wrong with me. No calf muscles, no glute muscles. I have no feeling where I sit no feeling of the backs of my legs. No feeling in my feet, very little control in my feet. No ability to push. I walk around on my heels all day, every day, no bladder control, no internal bodily functions whatsoever. But I walk and I just look like I've had a bad night on the town.
Ryan Campbell:
But that journey as a whole, we talk about, I mean I speak purely on how did you get back up? How did you swim? What were all the elements of that? It all boiled down to building a toolbox. My overwhelmed state in the beginning of my time in hospital, parents, brothers, cousins, doctors, Alan Jones, incredible humans, shark attacks survivors. They were all giving me advice. Advice on how to climb the mountain ahead of me. But it was too much. I had to take that crazy amount of advice. I had to take my overwhelmed state of mind and I had to somehow turn it into clarity. And that's where the mindset toolbox was born. My simple way, born in hospital to take the moments I was experiencing, moments that were easily forgettable to turn those moments into tools, tools that I could use to navigate change challenge, crisis, and adversity, and place them in my mindset tool box. Basically an unforgettable drawer that I have access to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The tools that I was going to use to climb the mountain.
Warwick Fairfax:
Wow. I mean, that's just an amazing journey, amazing story. Just for the listeners, Alan Jones, former coach of the Wallabies, that's Australia's national rugby team kind of a big deal, certainly in Sydney and in Queensland where rugby is pretty prevalent. But you mentioned early on that former diver said "Sink or swim," and it feels like that was a binary choice. It wasn't just plateau or lead a quiet life. It was sink might've been depression, suicide. I mean, who knows what sink would have been? I mean, it's scary to even contemplate. So it was like either swim or improve or the alternative is very dark and almost unthinkable. I mean that's, I think a lot of listeners wouldn't think about it that way, that sink or swim, you either rise or you fall into oblivion. I mean, it was that clear back then in the depths.
Ryan Campbell:
It was. Yeah. And I think it has to be that clear. And when I first started the two year process of planning around the world flight, I had a team of five people, no one else knew about it. Not even my extended family. I had a flying instructor who sat down with me, the very man who taught me to fly Big Al. And he said to me, "You're going to do this or not?" And I said, "Well, I don't know. One day I think I should, the next day, I don't know whether I should. And I just don't know." And he said, "Look, zoom out and have a look at the big picture. Where you are in life, what you are trying to achieve, how bad you want to do it. And then we're going to make a yes or no decision on whether you even attempt this round the world flight. If you make a yes decision, you are going to work unbelievably hard every single day until you get to the point where it is either A, is success or B, an absolute failure that you just can't bring back. Or you're going to say no, walk away and never look at it again."
Ryan Campbell:
That yes or no decision is binary as is the sink or swim decision. And I think we have to be clear in order to move forward and combat the mental, life is won and lost just above the shoulders. That's my deal. Right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Right.
Ryan Campbell:
We have to be binary otherwise we just get buried.
Warwick Fairfax:
So almost what I'm hearing you say is that two year preparation for the round the world flight, are we going to do it, are we going to not? It almost, in some sense, prepared you for that next round the world journey in a sense that next epic but tragic adventure, which was getting back from that horrific accident. You look back and say, "That kind of helped prepare me in some strange way?"
Ryan Campbell:
Without a doubt, a 100%, but yes, a 100%. What I also say is that at 21, I was lying in a hospital bed and I had experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. So highs higher than most people would ever experience, but lows lower than most people would ever experience. And it took a while for me to see it this way. But I started to view it as an opportunity. I'd been given an opportunity to compare. We have mountain climbers, as keynote speakers, we have people out there who have done incredible things. We have people out there who have suffered diversity kind of adversity stories. We have those people as well. We don't have a lot of people who've experienced both, especially by that age.
Ryan Campbell:
So what I was given was an opportunity to compare the highs and the lows and ask myself, where do we truly learn? Where do we grow? What makes me, me? And it was 150%. Yes, I did pull things from the round the world flight. Yes, it prepared me for what was to come, but I'd truly become Ryan, the person I am today through the adversity and the hard times in my life for sure.
Warwick Fairfax:
And that sort of amazing thought of nobody wants adversity, but there are some lessons who we are after a crucible is never the same as who we were before. So I want to hear about the toolbox that you've created, but yeah, talk a bit more about how there's some. It's going to sound very strange, but I don't want to say there's beauty in adversity, but there's certainly a lot of lessons in adversity that can, I don't know, maybe make us a better version, a more refined version of ourselves. I mean, what's your experience with that?
Ryan Campbell:
I remember feeling so unbelievably sorry for myself, which is what we all do as a reaction to negative change, or adversity or crisis. And I was feeling down and I was in hospital with a whole bunch of reasons that probably allowed me to feel a little down at this point. And I remember that every day that would hoist me off the bed in hospital. So they put a sling under me. It was a very non flattering kind of experience. And they'd lift me off the bed and they'd let me hang above that mattress until my body hurts so much that they'd just put me back down and let me rest. Every day we get hang for a little bit longer. And then they originally put me out of that bed into a wheelchair. And they took me to the rehabilitation gym.
Ryan Campbell:
That first trip to the rehabilitation gym changed my life. The gym was a place where quadriplegics and paraplegics were doing all they could to bring their bodies back to life and obtain what I call our maximum potential, which is a really important word in what I speak about now. So I was taken to this rehabilitation gym and I was placed down on a low lying mat, slung onto this mat. They told me my first challenge for the day was learning to roll over. Now, it was a whole lot harder the second time than it was the first time. But I remember loving a challenge and thinking, all right, like how can I go from my back to my stomach? Yeah, nothing works from the waist down, but I can do this. So I concocted a plan in my head, and I thought, if I could just lift one of my chunky up and lie it over the other leg and I could then lean over and grab the side of this bed and pull with my arms, I'm going to kind of untwist.
Ryan Campbell:
And I'll be not only lying on my stomach, but I'll be victorious in this first challenge. I remember doing that, twisting my legs and then grabbing the side of that bed and pulling. And as I pulled the fire breaks in my back and all the new titanium metalware that I have just screamed in pain. So I stopped on my side and my right arm was twisted, all kinds of trying to balance. I stopped just to let the pain subside. And I remember looking through a hole created by my elbow and what I saw through that hole at a point where I was really down in life, changed everything. What I saw was a guy called Ben. He was a young guy in his early 30s, sitting in a really big wheelchair. He'd slipped over, hit his head whilst mopping his girlfriend's floor.
Ryan Campbell:
He'd broken his neck, had no movement or feeling from his chest down and very little feeling in his arms or his hands. He was a quadriplegic. And I remember looking up at Ben and seeing Ben stare back at me. I was feeling sorry for myself at this point, really, really bad place in life. The way Ben looked at me, I realized what he would have given for one chance at learning to rollover. And at that point to say that I felt like the worst human on the face of the planet would be an absolute understatement. And I remember being put back into the wheelchair and taken back to my ward and put back in bed. And I remember my body resting and my mind moving at a million miles an hour. I knew at that point that I needed to remember the way that I felt when I looked at Ben, because it was that feeling, whatever it was. And I couldn't explain it at the time. It was that feeling that was going to allow me to get through the hard days. And there were plenty of hard days on the horizon.
Ryan Campbell:
So I decided to come up with a concept, which is the mindset toolbox to take those moments and place them somewhere where I won't forget them. So my concept is so simple, very, very simple. It's that we're all born with an empty toolbox. It's really big. It has wheels, lots of drawers. We'd take it with us wherever we go in life. When we get it in the beginning and when we're born, it's empty. Our job in life is to fill that toolbox with tools that we can use to work through the challenges that we will all no doubt face. Adversity is simply a byproduct of breathing. So we'd fill that toolbox with tools, tools that we can use to navigate change, challenge, crisis, and adversity.
Ryan Campbell:
It is our goal to learn how to find tools, how to use them and how to keep them sharp. Throughout that six months in hospital, the year and a half in rehab, the four and a half years up until this interview, I continue to find tools every day and place them in that toolbox. And I have a really big overflowing toolbox. And it's my way to not forget the moments that I need to navigate my life. It's my way to provide a tangible kind of learning experience in developing your mindset. And that's what this is. Life is won and lost above the shoulders. We have to go out and better ourselves. We have to go out and learn. We have all the information in the world at our fingertips. We have to understand that we have to build resiliency ways of thinking into our day to day life as an individual or an organization so that we can tackle how crucible moments, our tough days. Our tough years our 2020s.
Ryan Campbell:
We have to be wired that way. My mindset toolbox not only saved me, but it's now how I encourage others to think of their own mental health and resilience.
Warwick Fairfax:
I want to hear a little bit about this mindset toolbox. But I want to go back for one second. Here you are, trying to roll over, which for most of us is a pretty easy thing to do. It's like you just roll over. But for you at that point, you might've said climb Mount Everest. I mean, it was pretty difficult, but then as you were going over and bad things were happening and you looked at Ben. What was it about Ben's look that almost was a not a mini crucible, but some, an inflection point in your recovery, there was something about Ben's look, that kind of bore a hole through your soul almost.
Ryan Campbell:
He was just a big boy sitting in that wheelchair and he had elastic bands around his wrist and he was moving his wrist in and out, maybe an inch or two at a time. And that was his exercise for the day. And knowing quadriplegia quite well by that point, just being in a spinal cord injury ward and learning about a spinal cord injury and what it does to your body, I knew what state Ben was in. And I knew the very slim chance of him ever getting back to a point where I even was at that point at the beginning of my recovery. It was just the loss in his eyes and we went on to talk a lot throughout the next six months in rehab and learn more about each other and the struggles that we were both going through. And when I unpacked that moment with Ben into that mindset toolbox, at the surface level, I obviously learned perspective.
Ryan Campbell:
I was like "Oh, I'm actually quite lucky really at the surface level." But by unpacking that story into my mindset toolbox, that was a process that allowed me to pull so much more out of that moment than what I found at first glance. And that's the power of the toolbox. I learned so many things from gratitude through to not accepting what I had and my ability as opposed to focusing on what I'd lost. All of these different lessons from Ben, they all boiled down to one thing. I was lucky to be a paraplegic. I was 21 years old. I had just survived a plane crash. I had just turned 21. I'd been in hospital for not an entirely long amount of time and I could look at you and tell you that I was lucky to be a paraplegic. I could look at you and tell you that this challenge was not physical, it was mental. Without Ben's injection of gratitude that day, without the concept of the mindset toolbox, I would not. And I just would not be where I am today. I just wouldn't.
Warwick Fairfax:
That's amazing. And that's really one of the key elements of your toolbox, gratitude, confidence, resiliency. Obviously you can connect the dots now in hindsight, that sense of gratitude that I'm glad I'm not where Ben is. Ben would give as you said anything he could to be where Ryan was. So talk about how you use this toolbox to inspire others, both others who've been through physical challenges. They could be mental, physical, financial, abuse. I mean, there's all sorts of challenges in the world. So talk about how this can help, not just crash survivors or paraplegics, but just people in general. What about this toolbox can really help people?
Ryan Campbell:
I encourage anyone who has a pulse to build their own mindset toolbox because it doesn't matter where we live, the color of your skin, your background, religion, beliefs, geographical. It just doesn't matter. If you are breathing right now, you will have experienced adversity in your life and you will experience it more again, byproduct of breathing. So adversity is a common thread amongst every human on the planet. I encourage everyone to pull together their own mindset toolbox, to take the moments in their life and convert them to tools, to build resiliency and confidence in their ability to overcome. I did find however as I filled this mindset toolbox that even in a time of crisis a really rough moment, even with a full toolbox, it's hard to reach back into that toolbox and pull out exactly the right tool you need to overcome that challenge. Whether it's an engine failure in that split second moment. Whether you've just been furloughed, whether you've just found out that someone's been lost within a family or any form of adversity, big or small, we are so overwhelmed when it first strikes.
Ryan Campbell:
I wanted to create a checklist that we could run through very quickly and very simply, whenever that moment strikes. Now, I use my three favorite tools and most used tools out of my mindset toolbox to create that checklist. People often ask why a checklist? Well, why did you do that? Well as a pilot, when something goes wrong in an airplane, when a red light flashes or a warning buzzer sound, we don't just start pressing random buttons and pulling random levers despite what Hollywood may tell you, we use a checklist, right? We go through a checklist of predetermined potential problems. We work through the checklist items and we hopefully end at what is a solution to the problem.
Ryan Campbell:
So I created a checklist, not for aviation, but for life, a simple three step checklist that will not solve all your problems. If I knew the checklist to solve all of the problems in the world, I wouldn't be talking to you. I'd be on my yacht in the Caribbean drinking some form of alcohol, but this is a checklist that places you in a more change and challenge, ready mindset. It is so simple. It's gratitude, confidence, and resilience. And we can either go through that or we don't have to with timing, but that three step checklist is a very quick, easy way to talk about my tools.
Warwick Fairfax:
I'm just curious at least in summary, why those three, right?
Ryan Campbell:
They were my three favorite tools, Warwick, it's as simple as that. Everything I'd been through, everything I had when I built that mindset toolbox, I didn't just feel it from that day on. I went back to the round the world flight, and I unpack stories, stories that we share in keynotes around America and around the world. We took stories that I had put in my past folder. We pulled them out and we unpacked them. And I learned more and more from the experiences I'd already been through. So these three tools in this checklist are simply my most used most transformational tools that have changed my life.
Ryan Campbell:
And not only do I want other people to potentially implement my three step checklist, but I want you to understand the power of a checklist culture and start to create your own. Grab your own mindset, toolbox, go through the same process, fill it. Look at your top tools that you use every day. Look at the challenges you face, start to put together a little checklist that you can implement when times are tough, because this year's a tough year and we all need the mental resiliency to kind of bounce back.
Warwick Fairfax:
And I find that fascinating because you're saying by all means, use gratitude, confidence, resilience, but you're saying make sure that it works for you to develop your own, which is sort of a different approach. You could say, these are the three steps, guarantee it'll work for everybody, but you're saying it might work for a bunch, but here's what I've done just so that you can get an idea what it looks like, but create your own. That's a different approach. That's almost feels empowering to people rather than saying you got to use this or else.
Ryan Campbell:
No, we don't want the cookie cutter approach. It just doesn't work in life. It just doesn't. You know what, we're not the same. We're all different. I remember having a lady say to me after a keynote, "Oh the checklists won't work." She said, "A list don't work for me." She said, "I'll write a list. I navigate through that list. And I know a lot of people like that." And my pilot brain thinks why. It is the best thing in the world, but this didn't work for this lady. So I told her, we worked together and I said, "Let's take one, step back. A checklist is a systematic approach, an implementable way that we can just apply whatever it is over and over again. Let's create your systematic approach. So what do you enjoy? It could be a walk on the beach. Every time you struggle, or you have a rough day, take your shoes off, get your feet in the sand and go for a stroll. Watch the sunset. It could be anything, it could be the gym. It could be, it doesn't matter. We have to find our own little solutions to those moments of struggle and change. Every time we go through crucibles or every time we go through adversity or have a rough day, we've got to have tools in that toolbox that we can apply."
Gary S:
That is- I'm sorry Warwick, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Warwick Fairfax:
I was going to say, as we kind of wrap up one of the maybe last question I have is how does life look for Ryan Campbell now? These several years later, you've been through a lot. You're doing a lot of amazing things. How would you describe to people what's Ryan Campbell's life like now?
Ryan Campbell:
Ryan Campbell lives conveniently close to the Jack Daniels distillery in Tennessee. That's very, no it's, I a lot of people wonder how my life went after the accident. I went back to walking and as I said I do walk very, but a lot of things still wrong with me. I found my way back into the air flying airplanes with modified brake systems. But then I went as an incomplete paraplegic. I learned to fly a helicopter from scratch and now I have a commercial helicopter license. My goal was to fly helicopters full time. I was flying a helicopter one day. I had a rock in my shoe. I can't feel my feet and that rock ate into my foot.
Ryan Campbell:
So I ended up back in the hospital, but in my wheelchair for two months. That was my moment where I went, "Okay, we have to do more with these stories. We have to go out and help others who have been through similar things to me." I sold everything except a little airplane that got me back into the sky named Doug and Doug and I moved to Tennessee. And I now live in the U.S as a professional keynote speaker, working with organizations from school groups to fortune 500s delivering sessions from eight minutes to 90 minutes on navigating change, overcoming adversity and using our challenges in life to build a better future. And it is my passion. It's my drive. And I just find it unbelievably rewarding. So it's a pleasure to help others learn, and it's a pleasure to learn along the way.
Gary S:
That is an excellent segue to our, and I always say this as Warwick pointed out before we started recording, I always say this on every show. It's time to land the plane, but this really makes sense talking to you, Ryan. We've come to the point in the show where it's time to land the plane. But one thing I'd be remiss if I did not, based on what you just said for sure. And everything that we've talked about. If I didn't give you the chance to let people know how to find you and how to find your services online and elsewhere.
Ryan Campbell:
Absolutely. So we would love to help anyone and everyone and 2020's rough, and we do a multi-camera virtual keynote we've delivered this week to all sorts of large companies. You can find our details on all social media at Ryan Campbell Speaking, or you can find me and contact our team directly at ryancampbell.co it's not .com. I cannot afford the M yet www.ryancampbell.co. So reach out to us. We'd love to chat. We'd love to help,
Gary S:
Before I close, we have with every guest that we have on the show, we have a little form that we ask people to fill out. And sometimes the answers are really interesting and sometimes they're less interesting. And you gave an answer, I got to know what the answer to this question that you asked, we have on our form is if there's only one question we could ask you, what would you want it to be? And this is what you said, we should ask you. So I'm going to ask you this and see what the answer is. You said, we should ask you, what is the most unique purchase you've ever made?
Ryan Campbell:
Gary, when I moved to America, I got in the car and I drove to Graceland in Memphis to Elvis's place. I went into the gift shop and I bought a model pink Cadillac. It was always my dream to own a pink Cadillac. And I spent about $30 and I bought this small model pink Cadillac that sits by my television. Four months later, the opportunity arose to buy a real pink Cadillac. So I now own a two and a half ton, 1960 pink Cadillac with white leather interior that we drive to Kroger. We drive it to the movie theater. We take it everywhere. We just, I've never seen a machine in my life that brings so many smiles as what flow pink Cadillac does it, it led to a whole segment that we do, called what's your pink Cadillac? What's the one thing you buy? It's absolutely ridiculous. It just makes you feel like a kid and absolutely illogical. But my favorite ridiculous purchase in my life has been a genuine Elvis, 1960 pink Cadillac.
Gary S:
Wow. That beats mine, mine is a seven foot tall Superman action figure in my office, so.
Ryan Campbell:
That is insane.
Gary S:
Thank you for being with us. And as we do when we end listener, there's much great content here, but three things, sort of takeaways that you can take with you as you go from our conversation with Ryan. One, and he just started talking about that from the outset when he was six years old. And that is pay attention to your passions at a young age. Not everyone who dreams of being a firefighter or a nurse as a child ends up doing so, but they can. Ryan's story is a testament to the truth that the passion of your childhood can be the vision of your adulthood. If you love it, you can learn it and you can live it at any age. Like Ryan did, a great help to making that happen is to find support and to seek mentors and then go for it.
Gary S:
The second takeaway, I think is that we find the tools in our low points to power better times. That's something Ryan's said in a conversation we had before this episode. Crucibles are painful emotionally, financially, sometimes like Ryan's, physically. And there comes a time as a friend of Ryan's told him after his plane crash, that we have to decide to sink or swim. So start swimming one stroke at a time, you will get to a better destination than sinking.
Gary S:
And the third point that we've spent a really good dialogue here at the end talking about, is build a toolbox to help you as you go through your crucible. And fill it with the thoughts and practices that will help you navigate the steps you need to take to move beyond that crucible. Focus on filling that tool box with items that build your gratitude, your confidence, and your resilience.
Gary S:
Ryan says that life is won and lost above the shoulders. We would only add from Crucible Leadership to that by saying that crucibles are overcome and a life of significance is launched above the shoulders. So until next time we're together, listeners, thank you for spending time with us in this episode of Beyond the Crucible. And please remember as Ryan's beautiful story makes it very clear that your crucible experiences can be painful in a lot of ways, emotionally, financially, to your dreams, to your body. They can be very painful, but they are not the end of your story. Ryan's crucible was not the end of his story. Your crucibles can in fact, be the beginning of a new chapter in your story as they have been for Ryan. And that chapter can be, as it has been for Ryan, the best chapter of all, because what it leads to the path that puts you on is toward a life of significance.
In 8th grade, after dreaming for years of competing in the finals of the National Spelling Bee, Adom Appiah got knocked out of the competition early. Instead of wallowing in the disappointment of that crucible, though, he turned his attention to consoling the other kids who had also fallen short. That’s just one example of how this 16-year-old — author of two books and founder of the fundraising nonprofit Ball4Good — is living a life of significance and already focused on building a legacy of service to others.
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Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome everyone to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I'm Gary Schneeberger, the cohost of the show and you have clicked on play. We hope that you've subscribed to a podcast that deals in crucible experiences. Those experiences, crucible experiences, you probably know them a little bit too well. They're setbacks, failures, traumas, tragedies, things that don't always go right in your life that can knock the wind out of your sails. It can feel like it changes the trajectory of your lives.
Gary S:
And we talk about those things here on Beyond the Crucible, not so we can wallow in them, not so we can just share war stories about them, but we talk about them so that we can identify those things that we might learn from them and use those in moving, as the title of the show says, beyond those crucibles. And here with me to explore that is the founder of Crucible Leadership and the host of the show. And as I have taken to call him in the last few episodes, the Lego master of Crucible Leadership, Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, we have truly a remarkable guest and a remarkable show today.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I'm very much looking forward to it.
Gary S:
And the reason that it is remarkable, listener, I always read the biography of the guests before we start, but zero in on this one, and I'll tell you when I'm done just one of the reasons as if what's written here isn't remarkable enough, but there's lots of remarkable aspects to this guest story. This guest is Adom Appiah, who is a student, author and founder of Ball4Good, a nonprofit that supports communities through sports. A two-time National Spelling Bee competitor, Adom's books have received high reviews from teachers and community leaders.
Gary S:
He is the 2019 South Carolina high school honoree for the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards, and a recipient of the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes. In 2018, he received the Presidential Volunteer Service Award and the Mary L. Thomas Award for Civic Leadership and Community Change. He was appointed to the Points of Light Youth Council in February 2020, and is also a board member of the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Upstate. He's the recipient of the 2020 William R. Sims Award for Outstanding Youth in Philanthropy. A Roc Nation honoree, Adom has been featured in local state and national media.
Gary S:
He is the host of Kids Changing the World, a biweekly show highlighting youth in business or volunteerism. I love this next part, Adom, I love how this next sentence begins. In his free time, having read all that, I'm wondering, where is Adom's free time? But in his free time, he enjoys producing music, reading and playing video games. Wow. Warwick, that is quite a list of accomplishments, and this young man is indeed a young man, 16 years old and a high school junior, just both amazing and inspiring.
Warwick F:
Wow, well, Adom, thanks so much for being here. What you've done and who you are, it's almost overwhelming. My kids are a bit older, they're in their 20s, but my gosh, what you've done at 16, the two books you've written; Bouncing Back from Failure, Kids Can Change the World, I love both of them, but Kids Can Change the World, what a vision, and what you're doing with Ball4Good, it's mind blowing really. So thank you so much for being here. So before we get a bit into your crucible and bounce back and what you do for Ball4Good, tell us a bit about yourself.
Warwick F:
I think you live in South Carolina, Spartanburg, I believe, just tell us a bit about yourself, your family, growing up, just who is Adom? Give the listeners a bit of an idea of that.
Adom A:
Thank you. A little bit about myself, I'm 16 years old, a high school junior, and I really just enjoy helping others. And just a part of me has been just working with my family to help other people. Ever since I was young, we've just had this mentality of giving back to our community and making sure that others are fortunate and others are able to thrive and prosper. And so through my experiences growing up, that's just become a part of who I am. It's been ingrained in me to always give back. And so beyond my books, beyond the things that I have accomplished, I'm really just someone who loves to help others.
Warwick F:
Where did that come from? I mean, sometimes, it's a mom or a dad, a cousin, an uncle, a grandparent, a teacher. Where did that, just this mission to serve others, where did that come from?
Adom A:
I really think it's a family thing because it was ingrained in my mom, ingrained in my dad, and they just passed that down to me ever since a young age. Ever since I was able to walk, we've been able to walk for certain causes or give money or food or whatever we're able to do in that time to help others who don't have the same things that we have, and we're able to provide them with that opportunity or that health. And they're just focused on giving back and helping others.
Warwick F:
Wow. Some of your early memories, can you think of a particular example of where your mom or dad or just some family member was doing something you thought, "Boy, this is amazing." Give us an example of what was modeled for you, the kind of activities and behavior.
Adom A:
Well, I know that when I was very young, we went on walks for a kidney disease, we went on homelessness walks, and getting into the nonprofit world was just through osmosis really because mom was in the nonprofit world and she inspired so many people with her work, gathered people that are local libraries and different places to teach things like coding or reading to youth. And so being in that environment just had me in this nonprofit and giving back mindset from such a young age, I just grew up like that.
Warwick F:
So what did some of your buddies think because not everybody grows up in a family like that? They might just want to hang out, play, I don't know, school, whatever it is, what does some of your buddies think of your family and just that mindset of just wanting to help everybody? not everybody grows up in that kind of family.
Adom A:
Sure. I'm definitely blessed to have the family that I have with my friends. I know that there's a mutual respect there. We don't always have the same families or the same things that we participate in, but we always find a balance and they've helped me out with some volunteer work and I've had some fun with them playing some video games or whatever that might entails. So it's just a mutual understanding and we understand how our families operate and how to work together.
Warwick F:
That's amazing. One of the things you said is from an early age, you just had this desire, this passion to be in the spelling bee competition. Talk about, why the spelling bee? Some people want to do... not everybody wants to go in the spelling bee competition.
Adom A:
Sure. Yes. The spelling bee was something that I watched ever since maybe third grade, because as soon as I entered real school beyond kindergarten, I used to love the spelling bee and seen it performed in my school, because in my school there was a third grade spelling bee and that was the pinnacle of spelling. And so ever since the first grade, I saw those people and I wanted to be that champion that they announced every year. And in the second grade, I started going through class bees.
Adom A:
And then in third grade, we actually had our class competition based to determine who would go into the third grade spelling bee. And I had people talk to me about how it's not common for boys to spell, it's not common for people who like a certain way to spell. And so that was discouraging for me, but then my third grade teacher encouraged me to watch the Scripps National Spelling Bee and see the number of people represented in that bee. And it's just such a diverse group and a bunch of people just having this great time contributing themselves to words and understanding the dictionary. And I fell in love with it. I was inspired.
Adom A:
And so I ended up winning the third grade bee, and after that, I was just hungry for more spelling, but my school didn't have the opportunity to enroll in the national spelling bee until sixth grade. So that's when I started going back to spelling, reviewing the packets that my teachers would give me. And I was fortunate enough to go to the regional bee in sixth grade, even though I didn't win my school bee because I got second place. And our winner was gracious enough to give me the place to go to the regional bee because she had a conference that day.
Adom A:
And so going to that regional bee was just a great experience for me, I got way further than I would have ever expected. My parents helped me study, but I had no prior experience with it. I was able to get third place in that bee as a sixth grader, which was just wonderful to me and I was so thrilled and so shocked, but that also encouraged me to work harder the next year, given that I had seen what the layout was like. And so I knew how I had to study, I knew how I had to prepare. I was able to win my school bee the next year, and won the regional bee and progressed to the national bee.
Adom A:
And in that national experience, I got to meet so many people who were like-minded, who loved spelling, who just loved learning altogether, and I still have those connections to this day. And I was able to go again in my eighth grade year, and it was just a wonderful experience, learning about the spelling bee and going full circle and eventually making it there.
Warwick F:
But I think from what I understand, there was a competition in which you were trying to get in the semifinals and didn't make it, which grade was that?
Adom A:
That was eighth grade.
Warwick F:
That was eighth grade. So talk about that because from what I think you've said is, that was a tough thing to go through, a tough blow not making it. So talk about what happened and why it was tough and that whole experience.
Adom A:
Yes, sir. Going into the eighth grade spelling bee, there was an expectation because as I mentioned before, I realized that as I got to go and experience the regional bee, I was able to progress beyond that. So I was thinking that in seventh grade, as I went to experience the national bee, I'd be able to progress further than I had the last year. And that ended up not being the case. So that was very disappointing to me because of how much I had poured my heart into learning to spell and learning to make my way around the dictionary, learn the roots of words, just learn the ins and outs of the bee.
Adom A:
And so it was disappointing to me and disheartening when I got my word wrong and wasn't able to progress to the next round that everybody sees on TV. So it was upsetting to me, but in that very moment, I put it to the side and just decided that other people were going to feel down, other people are going to feel sad, and so I was going to uplift those people. And as they got off the stage, I decided to comfort them and encourage them and put my own struggling and disheartenment to the side. And eventually, at the end of that night, I went back to my room and I was thoroughly upset that I hadn't fulfilled the experience that I had dreamed of.
Adom A:
And so I began to write when I got home and I just started to reflect and started to understand how far I'd come and how much it had meant to me and what this failure had ultimately become. And that really just evolved, those words that I was writing evolved into Bouncing Back from Failure, my second book.
Warwick F:
What's remarkable about that is sometimes you go to a gut-wrenching experience you've wanted your whole life and you don't make it. And in that moment, you might be angry, sad, depressed, very few people in that moment have enough self-awareness or enough altruism in a sense to be thinking of other people. I mean, like people 10, 20, 30, 40-years older than you, wouldn't behave the way you did, wouldn't have the maturity you did. And how old were you back then?
Adom A:
14, I believe.
Warwick F:
Right. I don't know too many 14-year-olds let alone 40-year-olds would have that level of maturity.
Gary S:
I'm 55, it's hard for me to get there.
Warwick F:
Yeah. It's sort of unheard of, so what led you in that moment, the first thought being, "I need to care for the other folks here who haven't made it too. I need to comfort them." What led you to do that because that's off the charts remarkable?
Adom A:
I just try to apply the golden rule, treat others how you want to be treated. And I knew that in that specific moment, I was feeling down, I was feeling bad, but I decided to not let it just weigh me down and let me sit in the corner. And so I decided that other people are going to be feeling the same way and they might need someone to look out for them, someone other than their parents to console them, lift them up as a peer and look at them and just say that, "It's going to be all right and you're going to be able to grow beyond this experience."
Adom A:
And I was able to console some kids who had further years ahead of them. And I saw them go through and years following, the year that I got out and be even more successful than they were before. So I just thought that it was going to be really important for me to reach to those kids who were feeling down because I knew how they felt in that position.
Warwick F:
Wow. Well, not to repeat myself, it still blows me away. I just can't believe it. I don't know pretty much anybody that would react as maturely and honorably, really lifting up other people.
Gary S:
And that is, if I can, that is a unique experience, but your experience of having that eighth grade failure of not achieving the goal that you were after is surprisingly not unique. We've talked to many people on this show, Adom, one of them is a successful Hollywood writer, director, producer, actor, the whole thing. He just signed a two-year deal with Netflix. This guy's career is going well, we had him on this show. We thought his biggest crucible was going to be that his wife was pregnant with triplets and there were some complications and they almost lost the baby.
Gary S:
So we thought that's what he was going to talk about, but instead, the first thing he brought up was in eighth grade, he did not make the basketball team and all of his buddies did. And here's a guy, he's in his late 40s, early 50s, and he still remembers that moment as a pivotal moment in his life where he had to learn how to bounce back from failure as you had to learn at your age. So listeners, as you hear Adom talk about his experience and say, "Okay, he was in eighth grade, which was only three grades ago. He's going to have a lot of more."
Gary S:
I'm pretty sure that moment's going to stick in his heart because of the way that he prepared for it, and the same way that it did for the guests I was talking about, Robert Krantz, the filmmaker. It is okay, it is common for experiences when we're young to carry forth as crucibles. The beautiful thing about what Adom has described, is he moved beyond that. And the way that he moved beyond that, first and foremost, the first step was to help others.
Warwick F:
So well said. That is exactly right. So Adom, as you're back in your hotel room and like all of us, you're human, you're starting to just feel sad, were you down about yourself? All sorts of thoughts could have gone through your mind, "If my school had a spelling bee from third through eighth, maybe I would have been better prepared." Did you start feeling angry at yourself or bit down on others or what was going through your mind as you're in your hotel room, just reflecting on all of that?
Adom A:
I'm a kind of laid back person and a reserved person. So I didn't really express anything, but going through my mind, it was like reflecting on what I could have done better, what I could have understood or what I could have gone back and done. And then with a couple of days passing, I just came to the conclusion that I can't go back, I can't change that. There's not going to be another opportunity for me to approach the spelling bee, but there are going to be other opportunities for me to do other things in my future. And so I just took that into consideration, that's what helped me get out from that point of feeling down and feeling sorry.
Warwick F:
Again, I'm just blown away by that.
Gary S:
I am too.
Warwick F:
I don't know anybody of any age that so quickly would say, "Well, that was awful. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't have missed that one or maybe... " I don't know, if there'd be more spelling bees over the years, but just to say, "Well, past is the past, I can't change that, let's move on." Easy to say, but I don't know too many people that would have done what you did. That's, again, that's an unbelievable maturity. Yeah, it boggles the mind really. So that's incredible. You have a lot to teach people, I can tell you, of anybody of any age. So that's amazing. I'm going to to keep repeating myself. It's like, "Wow." I don't even know how many times I got to say wow.
Gary S:
This would be a good time, Adom, to tell you something. When I talked to your mom, okay, I've got notes here from talking to your mom. And she told me a lot of the things that you've told us here, and you've told the listeners here. And at one point, I had a similar reaction to what Warwick has been saying, "Oh my goodness, wow, it's incredible what this young man, the maturity he has shown and the care for others he has shown." And I said to her, "You must be so incredibly proud of your son?"
Gary S:
And this is a direct quote written right here on my page. She said, "I am absolutely proud," then she laughed, and she said, "But he probably doesn't care." Spoken like a mom of an exceptional child.
Warwick F:
Yeah. Well said. So I want to move on to maybe another defining moment, so talk about... Ball4Good came out of a project in school, but there was another project from what I understand working on like a computer project for high school seniors, and you were part way through it and decided to shift gears. So talk about what the project was and why you decided to shift gears halfway through?
Adom A:
Yes. So my first project that I was going to take on that I never quite took action on was going to help our neighboring and possibly even more senior living facilities, help them with their technology and understanding the things that they have around them such as laptops or iPads, just getting to work with them and getting to understand that. And I thought that that was a great cause, and I see some people doing that today and in the past, but I just thought that it wasn't something that could fully get behind. So as I was going through the process of outlining what I would do for this project, I just lost interest and decided that I would shift gears and rethink what I was doing and start with a passion.
Adom A:
And looking back, I'm so glad that I did, because this was able to grow to something beyond what I ever imagined just because I was starting with the passion of sports.
Warwick F:
But talk about just what happened. You had a conversation with your teacher, and it's the way you kind of changed gears. But basically I was going to say, "It's going to cost you. It's going to cost you a lot." So talk about that conversation. What did your teacher say and what was the cost that you had to agree to if you wanted to move forward?
Adom A:
So with that first project, we had already done a pitch, we had already done everything for the project grade. And so that's what I had earned, I had earned a pretty good grade on that project without actually starting it because we had pitched it because we had done those initial steps. And going back and erasing what I had done and moving forward with something new, I will lose those initial points. So I had lost the points from the project that I had earned and I had to regain them through Ball4Good.
Adom A:
So that was another way of encouraging me to keep on my toes and update my teacher, making sure that everything was in line because I had to make up for something, because I had to make up for lost ground.
Warwick F:
That was probably weeks, maybe months of work that you lost, right? I mean, you went from a good grade to zero?
Adom A:
Yes sir. In a sense.
Warwick F:
Zero points. It's almost like being in a, I don't know, 800 meters and you're 600 meters through an 800 meter race, and was like, "Okay, you're going to have to go back to the starting blocks again." It's like, "Seriously, really?" That basically is what happened, which is incredible. Now, what led you to make a shift that not too many other kids your age would have made? It's like, "Well, I'm going to lose all those points. I'm going to have to do all this work again. I'm going to have to go it double time, triple time." What led you to be so convinced that you wanted to make that shift?" Because the cost was very high.
Adom A:
Now, in discussions with people around me and my parents, family members, I just realized that if I was going to do something and I wanted to do it to the best of my ability, I wanted to have something that I was passionate about, that I can invest in. And so, I decided to reboot when I figured out that I wasn't feeling this project the same way that I thought I would. And so that took me back to square one, took me back to the brainstorming stage. And this time I took it with more care and more understanding of what I was looking for rather than just looking for a grade. And looking back, I'm so glad that I did.
Warwick F:
It's funny, it's not like providing technology to senior living places is such a bad idea. It's a pretty noble cause it's not like, "Oh, well, who cares?" That's noble, that's a wonderful thing to do. But talk about why Ball4Good, the concept of it really appealed to you and just fired you up, really? What about it made you say, "I got to do this?"
Adom A:
With, the concept of Ball4Good, I've always seen sports as a unifying measure. People have always been unified or divided about their sports teams, but overall, the sport itself brings people together. And so I thought that through my passion that I had for sports, specifically basketball at the time, I could bring a whole community together, even if it was a small community gathering. And it ended up being a much larger gathering than I would have ever imagined packing out the gym, but I just thought that I could bring people together and have a way to raise money with a joy behind it and have a community behind it, and just have this overall fun spirit going with the project.
Warwick F:
That's a remarkable vision, from what I hear you say, raise money through sports, but by bringing people together, by unifying them and letting them have fun. I mean, that concept of bringing people together. Obviously, the world is a pretty divided place in so many ways. When it's easy just to give up and say, "Well... " I mean, people a lot older than you just tend to be cynical, and, "What's the point? Nothing will change." Everybody's entrenched in their corners," and what have you. But yet you had a different spirit, you had more of an optimistic, so where's that come from? Because I don't sense that you're cynical, I sense to you're somebody filled with hope, right?
Adom A:
Yes sir.
Warwick F:
I think you're probably realistic, you're not in denial about the challenges of our world, but yet there must be a sense of optimism that fueled Ball4Good. Where's that sense of optimism come from?
Adom A:
I try to remain realistic in everything that I do. And I have a realistic vision of, what are the capabilities of this, what's the possibilities of this? And with Ball4Good, that kind of optimism and happy spirit really came with the idea that I would be helping somebody. If it wasn't a huge impact, I'd be helping somebody. It's not that it had to be something so magnificent, something that I would get so many awards or have a certain dollar amount, I just knew that somebody was going to benefit from this project. And even if it wasn't somebody that I would ever know of, they would benefit, and that just gave me hope, that just gave me drive, and it still does to this day.
Warwick F:
I think listeners really should hear what Adom is saying because it's so profound. Often, we think, "Oh, we want this big vision to change the world," which is great, but a big vision, if you just change one life, that's a big vision. And so we should never be discouraged saying, "Well, I can't change the world. I can't change my town. I can't change my neighborhood. Let's all get up." If you can help one person, that's a big vision. You've ended up helping a lot more than one person, but you were willing to accept whatever would come. You give it your all, and if it was one person, you would be good with that. That's a remarkable, again, I'll use that word again, incredibly mature way of thinking that people decades older than you don't get.
Warwick F:
There's probably a whole lot more thoughts that you have that could help people besides the two that you've done, but that's just a remarkable attitude. So talk a bit more about Ball4Good. You've talked a bit about uniting people through sports. Who are some of the people that you help? Just talk a bit more about that.
Adom A:
Yes. Through Ball4Good, we've been able to help several nonprofit organizations in my community and beyond. We've helped causes of child abuse, we've helped causes of advocacy, children's cancer, child camps for boys and girls clubs. We've just been able to help so many different causes with homelessness, or just people who aren't as advocated for, and we're able to reach those people through this collective community passion.
Warwick F:
How do you choose which groups to help?
Adom A:
Well, we actually have a very talented grants committee that's comprised of youth throughout our community. We're schooled by the Spartanburg County Foundation staff, and they teach us how to review grants. And then we're able to look at all of these applications that people submit to us, nail it down to four organizations, and then submit it to our various school districts. And they vote for the number one and the three finalists.
Warwick F:
Again, this is an organization a lot of people, again, decades older than you wouldn't know had to do. How do you pull the list together? Grants committee and a whole process to review, again, it blows my mind. How do you pull all that together?
Adom A:
Really a lot of listening because there was so much that I didn't know. And being a young person, I knew that there were going to be aspects of the nonprofit sector and just the business world in general that I had zero experience in because all my experience was school. And so going through this project, going into this real world scenario, I just had to have an open mind and open ears ready to listen to people and take different things from different aspects of the world and put them in my organization and the way that I would like to see fit.
Warwick F:
Wow. Again, remarkable.
Gary S:
I think this is the most times you've ever said wow in an episode, Warwick.
Warwick F:
It is. Normally at the end, there's two or three things that listeners need to listen to, there's probably 10 or 15 things that listeners need to listen to here. So here's another one. Speaking of listening, you mentioned listening. There's many successful, so-called successful executives, political leaders, whatever, most of them are terrible at listening. They have massive egos, thinking, "I know everything. I'm the foundation of all wisdom." They don't listen. And there's certainly a lot of young people, teenagers, 20s, who think, "Okay, I don't want to listen to my parents, I don't want to listen to my teachers, I don't want to listen to anybody. I've got it, I'm going to make my way." But you had the wisdom to know, "I don't know about nonprofits." How could you at your age? "I want to listen to the experts, to the best advice to pull us together." That requires remarkable humility. Where does that come from?
Warwick F:
I don't know, that's probably a tough question to answer, that desire to listen, the curiosity, the humility. I don't know, you probably can't answer where it comes from. You've probably have always been that way, I'm guessing. Is your mom or dad, they model some of these things for you, these desire to listen and be humble?
Adom A:
Definitely. I know that my mom always tells me the importance of respecting people and respecting where they come from. And so I've just worked that into my life and how I can take different aspects of the world and put them into what I do in the most productive way possible. My dad always tells me the importance of just doing you and doing what you need to do, what your legacy should be. And so he's taught me how I should listen to others, how I should take into account what everybody has to say and then pick what I believe to be important and ingrain that in my life.
Warwick F:
Another amazing word. I don't think I've heard pretty much any 16-year-olds mention is legacy, what your legacy to be. That's something people think about on their death bed. It's typically, "Man, I made lots of money, or whatever happened. And, oops, I neglected my family, I was so driven," whether it's in any field of endeavor; business, sports, the arts, but you're thinking about legacy right now. Do you have any inklings of what you want your legacy to be? It's probably a massive question, but since you brought up-
Gary S:
I bet you do. I bet you do.
Adom A:
I have some broad aspirations as to... I just want to be able to help, definitely more people that I've helped now. I want to be able to get to a point where I can consider myself a true philanthropist and be able to allow people to benefit, be able to help with the issues of the world in whatever way I can, whether that's in leadership or in financial contributions. I just want to be able to say at the end of my life that I was able to make a difference, I was able to help.
Gary S:
And that is in the parlance of Crucible Leadership, listeners. That's what we mean when we talk about leading a life of significance. What Adom just talked about is his ship where he's not exactly sure what port it's going to land at, his ship is pointed, the compass is pointed toward a life of significance.
Warwick F:
Yeah. That is a pretty amazing legacy. Let's talk a little bit more about Ball4Good. And so I get all the amazing things that you're contributing to, so how do you raise the money? Is it like sporting events? Or how do you maybe... I think you brought in some different, maybe NBA players, how do you do that side of it, the sporting events and create interest in what you're doing and raise the money?
Adom A:
Sure. Our first year we started with what is now our annual celebrity basketball game, that's where we tie in local celebrities as well as other celebrities to join us and play basketball against one another, and they just pitted against each other and teams. In the first year, we just raised money through grants, sponsorships, concessions, tickets sales, and then in the following years, in order to raise more money, we had competitions for the players to see which player could raise the most money, and they'd get a plaque for that. And so it was just encouraged players to get behind this cause and tell their friends about it.
Adom A:
So that spread the word about Ball4Good as a whole, and beyond the basketball game were able to raise money through a different streaming services, were able to raise money through soccer events, different school programs we've partnered with that are able to receive donations or donate physical items such as like winter hats for children or women with cancer. We're just able to do these various things for different organizations through avenues with sports and other avenues. As the quarantine hit, we were unable to have our annual basketball game, so we transitioned into something different this year.
Adom A:
We had a music fundraiser in which we streamed music on Instagram and Facebook, and our viewers tuned in every week for almost a month and a half. And they donated to the GoFundMe, were able to raise a substantial amount of money just by playing music and having a party every weekend.
Warwick F:
That's pretty creative. That's adaptable. Another important life quality is when life throws you a curve or like the whole coronavirus being able to figure out, "Okay, what do we do now?" So that's critical component for listeners in life.
Gary S:
This would be a good time, perhaps I think to do a couple of things. One, we're getting close to the time that we have to, I would normally say, land the plane, but let's say, rack the basketballs. So we're getting close to the part where we got to rack the basketballs and wrap up, but we're not there yet. But the other thing I would be very remiss, Adom, if I did not give you the opportunity to tell listeners where they can find out more about you, your books and about Ball4Good, how can they find out more?
Adom A:
Yes. My social media handles are all @iamadomappia, and you can also find us on Instagram @weball4good or Ball4Good on Twitter. And you can go to ball4good.org for more information about our organization. My books are also available for sale on Amazon, they are, Kids Can Change the World and Bouncing Back from Failure.
Gary S:
Fabulous. And we will spell for you listener both of the Adom's names so that you can find those handles in the social media accounts for sure.
Warwick F:
One thing I'm curious about is obviously your first book Bouncing Back from Failure, and it's so needed in our world today, but Kids Can Change the World, that's an amazing title. What's the concept there? Why'd you write that, obviously, you're changing the world and you're still in high school, but what prompted you to write that book? Maybe that's an obvious question, but I'm just curious.
Adom A:
Sure. Kids Can Change the World, actually didn't start as a book, it just started as me writing down ideas based on my experiences with aspiring to be involved for good. I just felt like that specific year for me was just so profound and so awakening that I decided to write down my ideas. And eventually, a couple of words turned into a full page, page turned into a chapter, and before I knew it, I had this book with these written out steps to how kids can make an impact. And the title says, kids can change the world and people view that as such a large and such a profound statement, but I truly think that if everybody has the mindset that they can change the world, the world can actually change, because if people have the mindset that I can't change the world, the world is so large, then nothing is going to get done.
Adom A:
But if people have the mindset that me as a person, if I do one small thing every day, the world will change in a small way, then eventually, a lot more it gets done because a lot of more people are purpose driven and excited about going out to make a difference in the world.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And I think kids have unique opportunities because sometimes you get few more decades in life and you get downtrodden, you get cynical, maybe you've suffered failure, maybe sometimes it can be not your fault, you've been mistreated, a lot of things can happen, and you start getting angry and sometimes understandably, you start giving up and just, "Oh, what's the point? The world isn't fair," which obviously is not. But sometimes as a kid, you might know that, but you haven't had a few decades of, I don't know, being mistreated or downtrodden or failing.
Warwick F:
And so, sometimes that sense of optimism hasn't faded yet that later on... And it can be very understandable why it fades, but it's good when hope and optimism doesn't fade. And sometimes with kids, you know what I mean? It hasn't faded yet. So there's a unique opportunity. So what's next with, obviously you've got a junior, you're probably thinking of life after high school and college and all sorts of things, but when you think about Ball4Good, what's the next step and the vision for you?
Adom A:
With Ball4Good, I'm looking, especially this year to have something to wrap up, I don't know, the scale, we were able to accomplish, but we're looking to do something with a streaming service that we'll be able to raise money through Ball4Good. It won't necessarily be me streaming, it could be someone else that we're partnered with, but we're looking to raise money through that. And then going forward, we're looking to have meetings with our various committees, check in with them and brainstorm as to how we can adapt, assuming that we're not able to return to what we normally do and anytime soon.
Warwick F:
Wow. Well, thank you, Adom, that's so many remarkable things and Gary, you're probably going to try and sum up here, but I think if there's some things that we can really learn from Adom, often what leads people to be great leaders is character. I love history, and one of the things we talk about a bit on here is Abraham Lincoln and historians regularly rate him as the top president. And he had this self-belief, but he also coupled with supreme humility, you could say, "Mr. Lincoln, in this era, you're an idiot." And he'd say, "Well, you're probably right, but tell me why."
Warwick F:
So what leads to greatness is really, obviously, as I'm sure your parents probably say all the time, is character, is that self-belief, but that sense of humility, the willing to listen and to learn, thinking of others. That's really what makes great leaders and great characters, and you're already living that way at 16, so it's mind blowing. So thank you. It's an honor to have you here. It really is.
Gary S:
I'm going to change the way I normally end the show. Listeners, you know how I normally end the show, Adom does not, but it's because of you, Adom, I'm not going to end the show like I normally do. Normally I say, "Here are three tips that you can learn from what we've just had in our interview with our guest." I'm not going to do that because I don't believe I can do justice to some of the truly insightful things you've said. So what I'm going to ask the listener to do is go back and replay this episode because there's a reason why Warwick stopped several times in this conversation with this young man and said, "Wow." Because there is great insight.
Gary S:
And his book may have been called Kids Can Change the World, but there are tips in this conversation where you at any age can change the world by simply following these simple examples. One of the things I love about this conversation, Adom, is that you don't talk a lot, you're a man, a young man of few words, and the words that you say have great impact. And I'm going to end, instead of doing the recap of trying to add extra words to your word, let people go back and listen to your words because they apply them to their lives, and listeners, you're going to be well on your way to overcoming your crucible and achieving a life of significance.
Gary S:
But I want to end on this quote that I found, because when you were talking to Adom about your initial journey, about wanting to be in the spelling bee, there were some people who were saying that boys aren't very good spellers. And that could have discouraged you, but your third grade teacher, you mentioned, encouraged you and got you going and got you into the spelling bee and lit that fire in you again that maybe some people had tamped down. And it reminded me of this quote from Franklin Roosevelt, FDR, the former president, who said this about youth, "We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future."
Gary S:
That's what your third grade teacher did, that's what your parents have done, and that is what you even still in the context of being a youth are doing for youth and for all of the adults who'll listen. I'm going to let you have the last word here, Adom. What's one tip you would give to someone who's going through a rough time, a crucible, a setback, a failure, what's the first step you would recommend someone take, who finds themselves in that position?
Adom A:
I'd say, in an experience where you're feeling hopeless, you're feeling bad, you are down, that you have failed, I'd say, take a moment just to reflect, think about all that you have, think about all that you've been blessed with and think of this failure as a blessing, because it serves as a lesson. It serves as a lesson that you can apply to your life in the future, and you can implement that in your life and always remember that failure, and it's going to lead you to further successes in your future.
Gary S:
Fabulous. I've been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word has been spoken. As we say in journalism circles, we put it at the end of our stories, #30#, end of story. Adom, you said it well. So listeners, thank you for spending time with us on this episode of Beyond the Crucible, we hope that you've gained some insights from our conversation. And we hope that it helps you recognize and understand that your crucible experience while painful, and it can be something that "is simple," that other people might not think would be painful, like not winning the spelling bee that you had trained for three or four years.
Gary S:
Some people might dismiss that as not really being a crucible, it is a crucible. And you may be in that crucible moment right now and feel like you're off balance, your life has been knocked off track, Adom has proven it through what he's, not only gone through, but what he's explained that that crucible experience, that pain, that failure, that setback is not the end of your story. In fact, if you learn the lessons of it, if you apply the lessons of it, if you flip the script and learn to serve others as you move beyond it, that crucible can become the launching point to a new story, a new chapter in your life that can be the best chapter in your life because what it leads to is something truly remarkable. And that is a life of significance.
It’s hard enough to get through failures and setbacks — we only make them worse by beating ourselves up or trying to move past them too quickly. Author and wellness coach Cami Smalley stresses the importance of looking at crucibles through the lens of our strengths and being intentional about taking mindful pauses to fuel our recovery build resilience.
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👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome everyone to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I'm Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. And you have happened upon, you've clicked play on. We hope that you've clicked subscribe, too. A podcast that deals with talks about crucible experiences. Those moments in our lives and we all know what they are because most of us have experienced them. Those moments in our lives where we have experienced a failure or a setback or a tragedy or a trauma. Something that maybe has happened to us. Something that maybe we have instigated to happen to us in some way, shape or form. But what they all have in common, these crucible experiences, is that they're painful.
Gary S:
That they can knock the wind out of your sails. They can knock you off the trajectory of your life. And we talk about them here, though, not because they are painful but because they can be overcome. We talk about them here because if we learn the lessons of our crucibles, if we apply those lessons and establish a vision that we make a reality, we can then point our lives to something more rewarding and that is a life of significance. And here with me as always is the host of the show, the architect of Crucible Leadership and a man who is indeed living a life of significance. Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, we got a good show today.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, Gary. Very much looking forward to it.
Gary S:
And I say we have a good show today, listener, because our guest is Cami Smalley. I'm going to tell you a little bit about Cami right now. Cami is a wellness coach and founder of Guided Resilience. And she offers a self-care and resilience process that transforms personal challenges into personal growth through mindful integration of mind, body, evidence-based approaches for well-being. Cami works with HR, business and healthcare leaders to develop group coaching and training programs to help develop the competencies they need to thrive. With decades of experience as a wellness coach, Cami makes sure that all guided resilience programs use evidence-based strategies to support efforts to stop the incessant pace and intensity of life.
Gary S:
Breathe your way to stability and ease. Think about your self-care and growth process and choose a life of your design. Her Amazon bestselling book, Mindful Pause: The Self-Care Guide to Resilience and Well-Being serves as a tool to share her work. Welcome, Cami. And this is going to be a great discussion, Warwick.
Cami S:
Thank you, Gary, and thank you Warwick. I'm so happy to be here.
Warwick F:
Well, thanks so much, Cami. I just love the whole concept of guided resilience and your book, Mindful Pause and love to talk about that in a bit. But I'd like to start just kind of how you grew up. I think you grew up in Iowa, I believe.
Cami S:
Yes.
Warwick F:
Obviously you've had some crucibles along the way. But just talk a bit about kind of your family and who is Cami Smalley and just how you grew up.
Cami S:
Oh, that made me smile, having that invitation because I'm really fortunate because I really had a blessed upbringing in Iowa. I had a great family. Intact family. Great parents. Two brothers and a sister. And then our extended family was, for me, family meant everybody. Grandparents. Aunts and uncles. Cousins. And we grew up very tightly knit. We're a very active family so movement was always a part of our playtime. And we worshiped together as a family. Keeping sabbath was really important. And we would spend a whole Sunday at grandma's house. And at that time, my mom was a stay-at-home mom. My grandma was a stay-at-home woman. And they really made a beautiful domestic church. I mean, it was a time for us to be together. To relax. To restore ourselves.
Cami S:
So I learned early on how important that sabbath was. And then I was an athlete. So I think I learned a lot about discipline and hard work and victory and defeat. While it seems not such a big deal as an adult when real crucibles come along, those early crucibles, I shared with Gary that our team got bumped from the state tournament in basketball which was like a lifelong dream. And that was the first time a real personal challenge came. But death of family members from both illness. I had a tragic loss in our family due to violence.
Cami S:
But that was all done in kind of the womb of a family where I was resourced so well to be able to endure those. And the context of faith to kind of hold that and draw meaning from it and hope. So that's my upbringing in Iowa. I often refer in coaching about the cow path and I have to watch myself because not everybody knows about the cow path. But part of habit changing is trying to redirect those cows, those brain pathways in a new direction and that's not easy. So that's an imagery from Iowa that has stuck with me.
Warwick F:
Right. Right. I mean, with your upbringing being so idyllic, it's like, whoa. And we'll get to your move here in a bit. But why would you want to leave? Leave parents and grandparents and family and such an idyllic setting. It's like, well, why would you leave that? What could be better? So I can totally get that. So talk a bit about, I think you mentioned that you played three sports in high school where I don't know if these days they allow you to do that.
Cami S:
Right.
Warwick F:
Yeah. You got to focus. And whichever your main sport is, the coach says, "Don't even think about playing those other sports." But so from what I understand your team was like really good and expected to win states and people probably, parents, family, just assumed, oh, this is your year. Right?
Cami S:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
You can't lose. All those awful phrases when people say that. Because on any given day, anything can happen. Sadly. So talk a bit about that because it might not seem that much now but for teenagers or anybody, that can be devastating. That can be something you feel like, "Well, how can I carry on?" I mean, it's easy to say it's just a game, but when that's what you love doing and that dream ends. So talk a bit about that crucible at that time and that dream that wasn't fulfilled.
Cami S:
Well, it's interesting. The way you ask that question makes me recall how deeply that wound hurt at the moment that it happened. And basketball is a winter sport, so I remember leaving the gym and just falling into a snow drift outside. And it felt like I needed ... that that fit for how painful the moment was that I had to be in the painful cold. And it just really, really hurt. I remember feeling like life had ended. And I can see where young people have that very kind of short scope when things are disruptive. And I was a student teacher at the time also, and I remember showing up at the elementary school, second grade classroom. Some of the kids had been at the game. They didn't even know we won or lost. And I showed up at the school and they had a poster out with my name on it and hearts and we love you and you're awesome. And nobody even talked about losing.
Cami S:
So that just really ... and I had a lot of adults trying to meet me cognitively and talk me through that. And it didn't compare to the innocence of children. Just having that admiration for who I was as a person and just a beloved teacher of theirs. And that really turned my corner.
Warwick F:
That's funny. It's not so much you needed the cognitive. Well, you know, you tried your best. They were unexpectedly good and all the rest. And I don't know a huge amount about basketball. Whatever your stats were they could say, "Cami, your stats were good for the game."
Cami S:
Yeah. Right.
Warwick F:
Well, okay. Thank you. That doesn't help. You know?
Cami S:
Right.
Warwick F:
You did your part. Okay. So. We still lost. And it wasn't the championship game either, was it? It was-
Cami S:
No, no. It was the sectional tournament time and it was a team we had beaten twice in the regular season play. We were expected to win. We weren't, by any means, expected to necessarily do well at state, but it was the trip to state that was so admired and sought after and was an expected feather in our hat for an accomplishment for the years of high school.
Warwick F:
Not to dwell on it, but it's a microcosm. Afterwards, did you sort of beat yourself up and say, "Gosh. I should have done A or B", or was it more like it was more, "Well, I did my best but we still lost"?
Cami S:
I'm trying to think back. I don't think I dwelled there very long. I think that part of my resilience is I know that what I drew from it was yes, I always know I put what I can into a competition. And so I was confident that in that moment I did what I needed to do. So it was really ... it became more about in the present moment, how was I going to deal with this new challenge?
Warwick F:
Right.
Gary S:
It's fascination, Cami, to hear you talk about how those students just loved on you. Just expressed their appreciation for you and that that, you used the phrase, "It helps you turn the corner." And Warwick, I've heard you describe in your own crucible experience with the takeover bid how for a while there you felt like nobody loved you or you weren't lovable. Not that nobody loved you, but that somehow what had happened made you less likable or lovable. And that part of your bouncing back from your crucible, moving beyond it, was also understanding that you were not your crucible. That did not define you and that there were other relationships and other emotions that people had for you that weren't tied to that at all.
Gary S:
And again, for the listeners to understand, for a high school student to have not made it to state versus the heir to multi-billion dollar media dynasty, those are circumstances that are quite different for a crucible. But listen to the emotions and listen to what got them past the crucible. It was love. It was appreciation. It was these very simple things, and those things apply to all of us who go through crucibles.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, exactly. Well-said. And obviously for me it was more I'm not defined by whether my takeover bid succeeded whether I'm involved in a 150 year old family business. It was still hard. I mean, this is sort of the early 90s when it went under and having a wife that loved me unconditionally and it wasn't about the money or not. And obviously feeling like from a faith perspective, God loves us unconditionally. And He has works of service for us to do, but His love isn't dependent on what we do. So a number of things. And yes, family, absolutely, is important.
Warwick F:
Cami, talk about sort of fast forward a bit. I think you got married to a guy you met in high school? Is that correct? And you were settling in Iowa and he was a doctor but there was a move happen which wasn't easy.
Cami S:
No. That wasn't easy. Because we had landed back at home and that vision of life that I described to you at the start of our conversation, I thought was going to be my life. And one of the things that I've learned is attachment causes suffering. And I had to take ... I had to do a lot of personal work in getting through that decision. And as always, love is the course that just makes it seem so easy. And I knew that staying was going to make my partner unhappy. And I was being called to love in a way that asked me to give up something in pursuit of a collective happiness that I knew that we both needed to be happy in order for our family to thrive.
Cami S:
And so that's the decision I made. And I also know it's a personal commitment of mine that I'm very deliberate in my decision making process because I don't want to leave room for regret going forward. And if in the moment I make a decision with what I understand to be available to me at the time, then mistakes just happen. And I can deal with them in the moment. But there's no room for regret, because I'm confident when I made the decision that I made it with right intention.
Warwick F:
And that's such an important point, is I'm also, as I jokingly say, when I don't make $2 billion takeovers, normally I'm actually a very thoughtful considered decision maker. One massive aberration and there are obviously reasons for that which I've talked about in earlier podcasts. But yeah. I mean just thinking it through carefully and then so okay, based on available information that's the right decision for me. So that was a big decision. You obviously came to it collectively but you obviously felt like it wasn't so much you were being pushed into it. You felt like it was the right thing to do. You obviously thought about it, prayed about it, talked about it, and you made that decision. But to leave a family when it's so close, I mean, I love that whole attachment thing you mentioned.
Warwick F:
But gosh. That is ... I mean, that's got to have been hard. So you moved to Minnesota and I mean, you're a strong person. You've grown up in a strong family. You're resilient. Even the basketball game, it was very painful but it wasn't like life was over. It's not like you went into your shell for the next five years. I mean, it was devastating, but you moved on. So you're not somebody that's ... you would think, "Gosh", you've always been resilient. Obviously, we're just chatting. I don't know you that well, but that would be my guess. But yet somehow, Minnesota was different. Somehow despite all of this resilience, somehow it was really difficult. So talk about why was it so difficult? What was the pain and why was it so difficult, do you think?
Cami S:
I've given a lot of thought to that because I've tried to understand why I was more vulnerable. And I think it has to do with age truly, and now the work that I do with adults, I recognize that age plays into it. And so I think really my brain got tired. I spent a year in a new place. Even driving, your brain gets very accustomed to familiarity. And so everything seemed hard. Driving places. Just trying to find the junior high basketball court that my daughter was competing in and getting lost. And this was before GPS. So, it was me listening to John Denver play Take Me Home, Country Roads, as I'm wandering around a state I didn't know.
Cami S:
So I think it was partly age and just fatigue. I think that having everything so new was compounding my fatigue. And then just being very devoted to try and resource my children first. So making sure they made friends. We're a musical family, so finding the right musical instructors. getting to know the teachers in the school system. Finding new places to shop. I think it was just accumulative overwhelm. And we hear that, I have a lot of clients. That's part of what ... they're surprised when it's not a big crucible. Sometimes it's just that life mounts up with these tensions, distractions, irritations that grow into an overwhelming mass that leads them feeling fatigued, and for me, depressed.
Warwick F:
Yeah. No, that totally makes sense. And do you look back and you were so focused on your kids and your family that maybe you didn't take enough time for yourself, you know?
Cami S:
Yeah. Funny that my theme in life now is self-care.
Warwick F:
Yeah.
Gary S:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
But I think for ... I imagine a lot of mothers, the whole concept of self-care is like, "Are you kidding me? Who has time for that?" That's just ... it's not reality.
Cami S:
Right. And whether you're a woman at home taking care of children or my husband and men or women out working in their careers, that tendency is so easy to prioritize. So many things ahead of our own self-care. And it was my husband that I mentioned earlier that it was the children. The universe has had beautiful ways to send teachers to me and they're never consistent, and they come in so many different ways. And it's been plum trees, my husband, children, the natural world in a lot of ways, but on this particular time, Steve and I were on a walk and I really believe the body speaks the mind. And while I was having a difficult time, we were on a walk because I couldn't run.
Cami S:
And he recognized my isolation in this transition time, and he encouraged me to look at a graduate degree. To get out and go engage in something for myself. And as we were walking, he said, "I'm excited for you. I'm excited to see you run with this." Which the way he said it to me, because I was physically unable to run at the time was my turning point, again. It's funny how those ... the apple falling from the tree. A stroke of insight. And that really began to shift my mood. I had his encouragement. I had this way of running that I had not thought of before. So, that was real important.
Warwick F:
And I think you've mentioned somewhere around there that your parents, they were not well or they had Alzheimer's? Was that around that time? Or was that ...
Cami S:
That was a little later.
Warwick F:
A little later. Okay.
Cami S:
That was a little later. So it was during my graduate studies that my dad became sick. And he was my ... I adored my father as a lot of people can say. And that was really ... and he was so healthy. He was the athlete that always encouraged me to work hard. In fact, he's the inspiration behind clean and fill. Clean and fill. He was a restaurant owner, so you were always busy. Even if it wasn't busy, you found ways to stay busy. So when he got sick, that was a really difficult time for me. He was also the entrepreneur. He ran a restaurant. So at that time, I was in grad school and I was working for a holistic health resource center serving people with chronic illness, and I withdrew from that because they lived in Iowa and I wanted to be able to be present to my family during that time.
Cami S:
But I also loved working. I knew that was an important part of my self-care, and that's when Guided Resilience was born, simultaneous to my dad's dying. And I think I was living into, I think, a genetically endowed gift of having my own business. It was my dad's life. His love. My mom never worried about my dad being faithful. He always accused him only of the restaurant being his mistress. But yeah. He was an important presence and motivation in my life.
Warwick F:
That was another tough crucible. So between your dad and this move to Minnesota, it seems like Guided Resilience was born. How did that happen and how did that grow out of your experiences?
Cami S:
The business Guided Resilience?
Warwick F:
Yeah. Well, and your personal journey, too. Because probably as you're trying to center yourself and get out of that sort of somewhat depressed state, did the business start first? Did you start thinking about these things as you were trying to help yourself and how did that whole thing happen?
Cami S:
I haven't thought of it quite like that before, Warwick. I think the graduate degree over at St. Kate's is a very personal growth oriented, as well. So I studied energy work there. I pursued my coaching degree while I was there. I pursued my yoga training while I was there. So it was kind of a ... they had curriculum but then it was also very self-designed as well. So that's when I started adding some of my education in. And it was simultaneously healing me at the same time. So it was resourcing me in very important ways to heal my own journey, and it inspired how I wanted to then ... the call for me to bring that work into what I already was doing. I've always been a coach. I mean, I was a coach of athletic teams.
Cami S:
Then I was a personal trainer and a fitness instructor. And always interested in holistic growth for people. But as I said, the universe kept calling me to wounded people at the Holistic Resource Center. People with cancer, which I really resisted. There was a reason I went into wellness. But I was placed in certain places. And so it was both a simultaneous personal growth process that transformed into how I feel I was intended to contribute to goodness, growth and energy in the world.
Warwick F:
So as you were taking these courses and learning, what was some of the key things that you discovered that you found very helpful to yourself?
Cami S:
Oh god. What just flashed in my mind when you asked that is I was in a spirituality and health class, and they talked about thinking outside the box. And that's been a really consistent theme, because my box, I viewed, I was a Cradle Catholic and as I described my childhood, very safe and homogenous and a lot of good qualities. But I didn't have a box to get out of. I had a fortress. My box had like six foot thick walls. And it's not that it was bad, it's just that I wasn't making room for a lot of other lenses, perspectives in the world. My studies took me to India to further my yoga understanding.
Cami S:
And it was a really beautiful and safe and supportive way to cherish the foundation that I had in my Catholicism and at the same time, expand my lens to looking at the other ways that people work. And the other ways that people are inspired. And living in the Twin Cities, I'm exposed to a very diverse environment. So that was new for coming from Iowa. So, I think that that was an important part of that journey.
Warwick F:
Yeah. No, I think a lot of people can relate that you get comfortable in your own box. I mean, I've lived in a bunch of different places from England where I went to college, and the U.S., back to Australia. And when the whole takeover ended, it's like, well, I've got a lot of friends here in Sydney. I really don't want to leave but yet it was clear that I had to, because it was such a prominent thing. I couldn't really carry on a normal life. But yeah, I get comfortable with my rhythms, as I call them, and I don't know. I've lived so many different places. I guess it would seem like I'm adventurous, but in some ways not. I don't know. I kind of force myself bit by bit. But I think most people are like that. Very few people like doing new things, irrespective of the culture. You get comfortable.
Warwick F:
But yet by not trying new things, comfort is not always good for growth. To grow you got to be-
Cami S:
No.
Warwick F:
... have some level of discomfort. So I imagine with those walls coming down, you probably made some conscious, thoughtful choices that I got to get out of this box here. It's not good for me to stay in the box.
Cami S:
Yeah. And there's always reward with that, right? I mean, it's scary at first. But seek and you find. And I learned early on that if I keep seeking, I trust that on the other side of that unknowing is going to be a reward and that has proved to be true.
Gary S:
And that brings me to one of the words or phrases that you use, Cami, when we talked first. You talked about meaning-making and the importance of meaning-making. How does that, for people who are listening, they've been through a crucible, they may be in that more stuck point, that more high centered point, what is meaning making by your definition, and how can that help move you beyond a crucible experience?
Cami S:
I don't think self-reflection comes naturally for some people, but I think it's critical to connecting the dots so that meaning emerges. So, kind of foundational to that is a meditation mindfulness or prayer practice that allows thoughts to emerge. And I continually sought out instruction and support. So always present in my life was not only the loved ones that I know had my best interest, but it was always important to have contact with someone that isn't necessarily vested in me. Coaches, spiritual directors, teachers in areas that I needed to learn more. And so by the inclusion of other instruction, then bringing that into meditation and prayer and beginning to process it. I often joke with my family about the Gospel according to Cami.
Cami S:
Because we know that events in our life, we're meant to learn from them. And we can only best learn from them ... learning for me means having a lot of different resources and information. And then me synthesizing it based on my perspectives and intuition and ... so I think that's how it happens for me.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, I think that's so profound what you're saying and that has to be maybe part of the cornerstone of Guided Resilience perhaps is most people aren't reflective. I mean, I actually am pretty reflective. Fortunately or unfortunately I'm kind of wired that way, which has its pluses and minuses. But overall, it's a good thing. But just reflect on kind of what's happening, what am I feeling. I know for me, if I'm feeling depressed or agitated or even angry, I have to understand why. Why am I feeling this? Sometimes I don't know. Fortunately. I mean, my first stop is typically to my wife, who knows me very well, saying, "Why am I feeling this?" And eight, nine times out of 10, she'll get it. And she'll let me know and that helps.
Warwick F:
But yes. Self-reflection. Meditation. Prayer. There's different ways of doing it. It's critical. But then the second piece you said, outside resources. Obviously it helps if you have some support within the home. Some do. And not everybody does. But whether it's at church or coaches, counseling. A lot of folks think counseling is a bad thing, but it's not. I think it's hard. I don't think there are too many people that can't be helped just a little bit by counseling. I know I've been at times, definitely. But that outside help who can give you a perspective or just ask you that right question that unlocks learning and understanding. And as you say, you synthesize it and then say, "Okay. So what do I do with this?"
Warwick F:
And usually you have that ... I don't know I think of that phrase in the Bible. That still, small voice. You just have that sense of okay, this is what this means. This is what I'm meant to do. This is what's going on. But that comes through prayer, meditation, counsel. That's sort of the building blocks, right? Those are some of the key cornerstones. So, yeah. Talk about some of the other elements of Guided Resilience. Is that a fair statement that part of that is start with self-reflection and outside counsel that's part of the vision?
Cami S:
Yeah. I mean, I build self-reflection. In Guided Resilience, kind of the methodology is grounded, growing and gifted. So it's grounded. And this is my personal approach too. It's grounded in evidence-based practice and an understanding of the holistic nature of all things. Those lenses also don't come very naturally for people. We get very siloed and try to solve problems in a silo. And not recognize the holistic interconnectedness of things. And then evidence-based, we're in a really exciting time in seeing the bridging between science and spirit. And I feel really comfortable and called to walk that line. Warwick, as you mentioned, in the way you approach your conversations. I think that there's been made plenty of room for us to have conversations about really deeply meaningful human experience from a lens of scientific understanding now has really ramped up, and from the wisdom traditions that have been trying to describe it as best as they could for thousands of years.
Cami S:
And the two really mutually support each other these days. And so those kinds of conversations are really exciting.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I think that's so true. I mean, obviously, medicine is important but it's medicine, meditation, prayer. Obviously good nutrition. Fortunately, my wife is a big believer in good nutrition. Avoiding some foods that are a little bit more toxic than others and more organic. And I think a lot of people obviously try to do that. But yeah. When you're agitated in your spirit, I think we know now that is not good for you medically. It doesn't matter how understandable it is. Like for me, if I'm anxious, it tends to affect my stomach. And I have to watch what I eat. I mean, obviously if you've got a somewhat sensitive stomach you stay away from tomatoes, chocolate and that kind of thing. They're sort of basic things that you understand. But if I'm agitated, I got to be more careful than normal. And say, "Okay. There's clearly a problem. My stomach is telling me there's a problem. I need to find a way to calm down, whether it's prayer, meditation or taking a long walk."
Warwick F:
Whatever it is. And do something about it. And it's not just a matter of, oh I'm just going to keep being anxious and taking antacid. It's not wrong to take an antacid. But meditation or prayer or a long walk is good, too. You do a bit of everything. Does that kind of make sense kind of what you're saying?
Cami S:
Oh, absolutely. And the really empowering thing that you mentioned is having some control over that because very often the things that causes our anxiety are things that are outside of our control. And so knowing that I can self-regulate and make choices that are going to help me with the very natural response to upsetting things in the world that are outside of my control really strikes a chord at what makes us fully healthy and human, and that is autonomy and self-empowerment. To be able to choose how to self-regulate.
Warwick F:
And that's where I feel like for me having a wisdom tradition, faith tradition, I think is a big help. Because if you feel like God or the universe is in control and it's not my responsibility to solve things that I can't control. I'm responsible for trying to make a difference where I can. But whether it's kids, parents, illnesses, a lot of things in life that we can do some things about but we can't control everything and just try to force yourself through prayer or meditation to let it go. That in itself, that's a huge challenge. A lot of people just say, "No. I'm just going to keep angry about it." Or another thing I often talk about is forgiveness. Which is a different conversation but from a health and wellness perspective even if you have every right to be bitter at somebody that wronged you objectively, typically they could careless which is galling, but that's just life.
Warwick F:
But the person it hurts physically and mentally is you. So I often say, "The reason you should forgive is because you're worth it." You know?
Cami S:
Yes.
Warwick F:
Forget them.
Cami S:
Oh, that's just great.
Warwick F:
So that's, again, it's a discipline. It's like I can't afford to be angry and vengeful because it's going to hurt my health. You know?
Cami S:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
And it's going to hurt my mental state. So I've got to ... So talk about some of the other elements of ... I love some of the things you have on like the Mindful Pause Process. The stop, breathe, think, choose. I mean, there's so many good things. So talk about some of the other elements. Obviously self-reflection. Getting good counsel. What are some of the other elements in just this wonderful concept you have of Guided Resilience?
Cami S:
Well, I think it's important to know that how we think is really important. So when we do self-reflection, self-reflection can be guided in a proper way, too. We have a built-in negativity bias. So if somebody can come to their self-reflection very harsh, critical, judgemental. Which just really interrupts the restoration and forward growth and movement. So how we think is really important. And so when I work with myself and with folks, I come from a strengths-based and positivity lens. So, first thing I do with clients is have them do a strengths inventory. I use the VIA survey of character strengths. Nine times out of 10 people can't tell me. They can instantly tell me everything that's wrong about them that they want to fix, but when asked, well what are your virtues, what do you value? They stammer and stumble and can't come up with what makes them ... what really lights them up.
Cami S:
And so I ask them to know that and then there's the concept of the signature strengths, and that's knowing your top five. Having them on the mind all the time. And as a coach, then, I want to know their top five. And so when I'm visiting with them and listening to them speak, I'm listening for and helping them train themselves to hear how they're living into their strengths. So strengths-based lens is really important. And then part of what we're amplifying when we do that is all of the theory around positive emotion. We're getting out of the judgemental and critical mindset that's narrow and leaves very little room for expansive, creative or collaborative thinking, and we're trying to really broaden our awareness. So being very intentional about shifting. Barbara Fredrickson describes three to one. And when you think about the natural evolution of a day, it's very easy for there to be way more disruptive, frustrating, challenging moments than being not only acknowledging but savoring the good.
Cami S:
And with the folks I work with, healthcare, not only are they ... they have the natural negativity bias, but then they go into a discipline where they're trained to look for what's wrong. So they're trained to look for symptoms and things that need to be fixed. So again, we're back to habits. And not that those aren't good things. Obviously we want professionals that are able to help us diagnose problems and fix them. But not to the detriment of training and reinforcing the ability to see the good and savor it and let it have a role in shaping our lens of life and how we live. So that's a very important part. And to your point about self-reflection, I have folks do a chip. I call it a chip. I give them prompts for their self-reflection. So I have them start out with the C stands for celebrate.
Cami S:
I have to force them to do that because that's not where they'll naturally begin. What went well? The H is happen. I want you to stick with the good. How did it happen? Who was around? What were the circumstances? I want to know all of that. The I then, finally we're in a place. We're in that up spiral of confidence and celebration. Now I can identify. Where were my stumbling blocks? And then that naturally evolves to the P which is plan. Now my intuition is kind of primed. And I'm like, "What naturally am I being called to experiment with next that's going to move me forward?"
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, this is really, to me so profound because when you go through a crucible, it's easy to beat yourself up. In my case, it was pretty simple. It's like, how could I have been so stupid? Launch this big takeover. Alienate my family. Company goes under. It affects thousands of people's jobs. The company went on, but it was a little dicey at the time. And you just want to relentlessly beat yourself up. That's normal, irrespective of the crucible. You just want to crucify yourself. You just ...
Cami S:
Right.
Warwick F:
At the extreme, some people would get to I'm worthless. I shouldn't be here. I make everybody miserable. You can really get in a downward spiral. But helping people understand that we all have strengths? Fortunately I was able to find that being a reflective advisor, analytical, I'm good on boards because I'm able to ask questions and speak truth in a way that can be heard. And so I found some areas of gifting but it's not natural. It took me years. And maybe with your process it would have shaved off quite a few years. But this concept of just helping people understand what their strengths are, what their values are, and that there are things that they're good at. And I'm sure a part of it is just letting go of the things, mistakes and things you're not good at. And that's okay. We all make maybe poor choices or bad things happen. That's so ... and just your whole celebrate. It's sort of interesting.
Warwick F:
We're always quick to talk about the bad, but I often find it's very difficult to remember the good, because we tend to want to forget that. I mean, one of the things we do in our family. It's funny. It was Father's Day on Sunday, but it was also my daughter's birthday, so we had to share it. So-
Cami S:
The same thing happened at our house.
Warwick F:
No.
Cami S:
Yeah. Yeah. My husband, obviously, Father's Day. And Meredith, our oldest, her birthday is on Tuesday but we used the weekend to celebrate her birthday as well.
Warwick F:
Yeah. So I at least got a couple hours in before we shifted to the main event. But it was all good. But one of the things we do on birthdays, and we've done this ever since my kids were small, we go around. So the youngest to oldest. And we say, "Okay. What do you most admire about that person?" And really talk about it. Well, I grew up in a journalistic family, so at least some of my kids, they're writers. They know how to communicate. And it's fine until it's your birthday. Then watch out and they go into exhaustive detail. And they're typically very accurate too. So it's not just ... yeah. Not wrong. But I've always felt that that's really important.
Warwick F:
And so year after year, you're hearing these positive messages. More than once a year. But just why your family thinks you're so valuable and why they admire you so much. Not just, "Oh, you're wonderful." But being very specific about it. So I just feel like we don't do that enough in our society. And that, I think, builds strength and resilience when we not false praise, but honestly praise somebody for the good that they do. And does that make sense?
Cami S:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely makes sense. And I also ... The direction this is going and this often comes up with clients, there's an expectation when they come to a resilience coach. When people are having those crucible moments, that whatever I am inviting them to do is going to alleviate their suffering immediately. And that's where I put that almost right upfront when I have conversations. That you're where you're at for a very important purpose. And so we don't want to rush that process. There are things to help you endure the discomfort, the confusion, the anxiety, but we're not going to rush through that. Because those are really important times too.
Cami S:
I think it was Sue Monk Kidd that wrote a beautiful book called When the Heart Waits, and that I read at my darkest times. And it's also very important to have the presence of someone who trusts the darkness. That I can help you feel good because I know that that's an important part of healing, but we don't have to be afraid of what comes up in those crucibles. And we can't say how long they're going to last. Nobody can say. The resilience coach can't shorten your suffering. Life has a plan for that. But we can trust that you are going to be learning and growing and all of that is still available in that process.
Warwick F:
And that's, again, another such an important point is it's like a broken bone. It doesn't heal overnight. And as I often say, sadly, "Sometimes there are scars." You might quote, unquote, "get over it", but it doesn't mean to say there isn't some residual pain, be it physical, emotionally. I mean, for me most of the 90's as listeners know, was somewhat of a dark period. It took me years to bounce back. And some of the elements you've mentioned. Self-reflection. Support of family. Friends. Counselors. Coach. A variety of folks. But one of the things that helped me is I found there are things I could do and not screw up as I thought at the time.
Warwick F:
Baby steps. I began to see there are some things I can do that people respect me for. And because my self-worth was very low. And so gradually it's like, wow. And it was bit by bit. So I often talk about when you're finding things that you can do, especially from my perspective that somehow helps others, there's a healing balm in that. There's a healing kind of ointment if you will.
Cami S:
Oh. Yeah.
Warwick F:
I mean, maybe this is an obvious thing to you. Maybe not to all listeners. But as you were studying and then as you're helping others, did you feel like, "You know what? There's something I'm doing that is worthwhile"? And it's okay to admit I feel good about helping people. It's not wrong. It's not why you're doing it. But is there an aspect of Guided Resilience that when you get to the point where you can focus on helping others that that's another step on the journey to wholeness and wellness? Does that make sense?
Cami S:
Absolutely. And I think it's a little less linear and a little more integrative. So it's not somewhere I get to eventually. And for each person it's really individual. That's something that I don't attempt to even try to prescribe. I'm thinking of a cancer survivor that I worked with at one point who was so fatigued by her treatment. Not only the disease, but the treatment causing additional illness that she couldn't serve. I mean, she couldn't even mother her own children. And she found joy. She expressed her finding joy in watching her mother serve her children. To watch her mother be happy when happy was really hard for her to muster up the energy for.
Cami S:
So the idea of serving others, again, has a lot of expressions that to wherever somebody finds themselves in their crucible moment, having to have some flexibility on what that looks like could be very not what they're used to.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I think one of the ways I look at it is, how do you find purpose in the pain? How do you find meaning? Sometimes you might feel like this makes no sense, but if you can use what you've been through in some ways to help others, somehow giving the pain a little bit of meaning can make it easier to move on. And obviously some circumstances you're not physically capable of. But to the degree whether it's an abuse survivor or whatever the circumstance is, you have a unique gift. And unfortunately, in a sense, where you can use that to help others. And people can say, "Well, you get where I am." Because you've been there.
Cami S:
That wounded warrior kind of idea is so powerful. To have that wisdom and perspective and a little bit of distance from your crucible. Absolutely. I think that that's very empowering. And I feel like part of the natural evolution of why life happens the way it does. So that it produces warriors that can be out there to be present to and lift up and support the ones that are next in line for suffering.
Gary S:
That is an excellent point for us to begin the process. All right. I think I heard the captain turn on the fasten seatbelt sign and it's getting to be time to land the plane. But what you just said, Cami, about having a wounded warrior to help guide people along the process of coming back from their own crucibles. That's your story. So how can listeners who have been part of this conversation, how can they get in touch with you? How can they learn more about Guided Resilience?
Cami S:
Probably the first place to start would be to go to my website at guidedresilience.com. And then there's ways that they can connect with me there. And they can learn about my process and a little bit more about how I work.
Gary S:
Warwick, you had another question. I cut you off. I apologize.
Warwick F:
No, no. That's fine. No. I just want to thank you, Cami. I mean, just the whole concept of Guided Resilience that I think what you're helping people understand that there is hope when you go through a crucible. There is a path back to wholeness, wellness. There is a way to find meaning, purpose in the pain. And really helping people focus on not so much shortcomings but their gifting. Their passions. Their values. It's not a short process. But I love that phrase guided resilience. But with the appropriate help, guide and coaching, the path back, it is possible. You can help. It won't be linear. It won't be easy. But there is hope. So thank you so much for what you do and sharing, and it's very encouraging. I think it's a message people really need to hear.
Cami S:
Warwick, if I may, I think that there would just be one kind of a capstone that I would really love listeners to be able to hear in that they have everything they need, and that they are perfectly whole in the moment they're at. The suffering and pain, woundedness, physical disease, does not separate them from the concept of perfect wholeness in the moment. And so I think that's really important too, because we don't need to postpone. While it is a journey and that's a very important journey, this moment, the way I find myself now, is I have everything I need and I can be perfectly whole.
Gary S:
Now that, what you heard listener, was the plane hitting the runway. That was a great place. That, Cami, was a fantastic bit of encouragement to land on. And I'm going to close us out with some takeaways I think that listeners can pull from this extremely interesting conversation that we just had between Warwick and Cami. One, first one would be lean into love after your crucible experience. The short description of this podcast is you are more than your failures and setbacks. That's how we describe it to people. But it can feel like crucible experiences define you. Whether it's missing out on the state basketball playoffs, or whether it's losing the 150 year old family media dynasty, those things can feel like that's what's defined you.
Gary S:
But the ones you love will remind you there is more to you than your failures and setbacks. Their words and care will help you move beyond your crucible. Second takeaway point from this conversation would be take time for self-care. We all have responsibilities to other people and we all have responsibilities to other projects and things in our lives. But we will not be available for others and other tasks if we don't take care of our own needs. Nurture yourself. This is something Cami said to me, and we didn't say it here but I'm going to get to say it here. Personal reflection is a poverty in our culture. We can change that. We can put money into that account. We can change and make personal reflection something that is rich in our culture.
Gary S:
And the third point, I think, for all of us to remember moving forward is to practice guided resilience. To focus on our strengths and our values. When you're going to respond, not really react to difficult circumstances, that's what you should be doing. Including your crucible experiences. Bring your strengths and your values to bear on your crucible experiences. And this is an extraordinarily important point to end on. Take your time. It does not have to be fast. Many times it won't be fast. So thank you listener, for joining us on this episode of Beyond the Crucible. We'd ask, Warwick and I would ask that you do us a little favor. On the podcast app in which you're listening right now, please click subscribe. That will help us reach more people and it'll help ensure you that you will not ever miss an episode of this podcast going forward.
Gary S:
So until the next time we're together, remember that crucible experiences are something we pretty much all have in common. They're painful. They can knock us off the trajectory of our lives, but they're not the end of our stories. They are, in fact, if we learn the lessons of them, apply the lessons of them. Apply some self-care. They can be the best new chapter of our lives. That does not mean that that chapter is going to be written quickly. It may not be a novella. It may be a James Michener novel. It may be a long book. But those books will be written and they will be the most rewarding chapters and books of your life because where they end up, the last page of that book, brings you to a life of significance.
It can make a professional paper cut feel like a full-fledged crucible. It leaves you wondering why you and your work are never good enough. But perfectionism, for all its insidiousness, can be overcome. Show yourself some grace, find the humor in your missteps and realize that good enough usually is, in fact, good enough.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome, everyone, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I'm Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the show, and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. You have clicked play. We hope you've clicked subscribe to a podcast that deals in what we call crucible experiences. Now, you probably know what they are because you've probably experienced one. Crucible experiences are those painful moments in life, failures, setbacks, traumas, tragedies, some things that can happen to you, some things that you can have a hand in making happen, but their common denominator is that they can knock the wind out of your sails. You can be moving along a line in your life, a crucible experience can come along and knock you off your feet, knock you off your trajectory. They are truly life-changing moments.
Gary S:
And that's why we talk about them here. But we talk about them here on Crucible Leadership not so that we can kind of swap war stories, we talk about them here so that we can find hope and healing through the experience of other folks who have gone through them, and through the insights and the experiences of the host of the program and the founder of Crucible Leadership, and that man is Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, it's great to be here again with you, talking about a subject that we both know all too well.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, yep. Happy to be here. This is a subject I'm sure we both wish we didn't know so well.
Gary S:
Indeed. In fact, the subject that we're going to talk about today is perfectionism. I'm already feeling the burden of that, because I wanted to say in the introduction that I'm with Warwick, not welcoming Warwick like I'm the host of the show, because I'm not, Warwick is the host of the show, I'm the co-host, and I want to make that clear, and I didn't quite do it the way I wanted to do it. So there you go. Perfectionism rearing its difficult head. To kick off our conversation, Warwick, I thought I would start with something you wrote. And listener, there is a blog that Warwick has on this subject, and sometimes when Warwick and I do these episodes where there's not a guest, it's just the two of us talking about principles of crucible leadership, many times the ideas for these podcasts grow out of a regular blog that Warwick writes for crucibleleadership.com. You can visit crucibleleadership.com, sign up to receive regular email updates, which will include his blogs. But here on the subject of perfectionism is the opening paragraph of the blog that Warwick has penned on this subject.
Gary S:
"Perfectionism is a struggle that so many of us have. No matter what we do, it seems like it's not good enough. Other people might say our work was great, that dish came out really well, we played amazingly in that game, but what do we say to ourselves? 'Well, our work could have been better. We knew we should have added that one spice that would have taken that dish to the next level. Okay, we might have played all right, but there was that one crucial opportunity in the game that we did not take advantage of.' Those affected by perfectionism, for us, the glass is perpetually half-empty. We are never satisfied with our performance." I'll add by way of turning it over to Warwick, I don't even sometimes think the glass is half empty. I sometimes just think the glass is a dirty dish, and I'm the one that got it dirty.
Warwick F:
Boy, that is so well said. Half empty would seem to be optimistic, wouldn't it? Perfectionism is insidious. We get so self-critical, and we'll talk about the ramifications later, but it can make us risk-averse, it can make us think no matter what we do, we fail. It just can erode our sense of self-confidence, our ability to accomplish things, it can affect our relationships. I mean, it's really an insidious thing.
Gary S:
One of the reasons that we're talking about this today is that you and I both have had, in the last couple of weeks, circumstances, situations that occurred where we kind of beat ourselves up or were kind of perfectionistic about, and it occurred to you, "That might be a really good blog to write for folks," and then it occurred to us, "That might be a really good podcast." So this comes from, in the same way that Crucible Leadership, and I'm not overstating this, I'm not being glib, in the same way that Crucible Leadership was birthed from your major life crucible of the failed takeover of the family media company. Just like that birthed Crucible Leadership, some experiences that you've had over the last couple of weeks, some experiences that you've had throughout your life, very real experiences with perfectionism kind of prompted the blog I just read for and the podcast that we're having right now.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Perfectionism can run the gamut from the small seemingly trivial incidents to the major. And I can think of some recent, some not so recent, let's start with the trivial. We're in Northern Michigan at the moment and we were going to go on a bike ride on this just beautiful trail. And there's three adult kids and my wife. So we've got to figure out how to put the car carrier on the car for the bikes. And of course we need more than one car because we can only put three bikes on a car carrier. So there's a bit of a logistical, we'll figure it out. So we figured it all out. Then we made sure we had everything. So we get there and everybody has their bike helmet, except me. What you need is a bike and a bike helmet. Because safety first, even though it's a trail through the wilderness and tunnels of trees, it's just beautiful. And I'm one of these people that double, triple check. I rarely forget things. I mean, I'm not infallible, but for some reason it was like a 20 minute drive back to the house. I was just crucifying myself. So what ended up happening? Because you can always use another bike helmet and some of them probably in the world.
Warwick F:
We went like a two minute drive to the nearest town that had a bike shop, got a bike helmet. But meanwhile, that's delaying everybody. They're waiting for me. It's like, "Dad, I mean, come on. I mean really, I mean bike helmets." And they're okay. But I was just, at least certainly for that day, I don't know about the next day, I was like, "How hard is it? Pick up the bike helmet and put it in the car." I could have swore I did it. Maybe somebody'd taken it out and you get a bit crazy paranoid sometimes when you're a perfectionist, so I got over it, but I was so angry at myself, because I'm delaying people. I'm feeling stupid. So that's sort of one incident. I can think of another incident, when I'm not much of a boating guy, but we were driving this boat back into a hoist, which when there are waves on Lake Michigan, you need a hoist to raise it above the storms.
Warwick F:
And there was a couple of kayakers out there watching us pull into a dark area, but they were way too close. And so right where I wanted to line myself up, they were in the way. And so what ended up happening with all the [stack 00:09:55] people on the boat is I came at the wrong angle and I kind of scratched the side of the boat and because of the way things work you have to wait until you winterize. It was going to be weeks or couple months before anything could be done. And I persecuted myself, beat myself up for days, maybe even a couple of weeks or more and stuff happens, but it's like, "Oh, I should have told the stupid kayak people who I was pretty ticked at, I don't know who they are, move out of the way but I didn't think about it." And it's like, "I should have been more careful. I should have this, should have this, should have that." And it just went on and on and on.
Warwick F:
Probably one that felt a little bit more serious was International Coach Federation certified coach. And one of the things we do every few years is get re-certified and you go through a mentor coaching thing just to make sure your skills are sharp. And so at one point I was doing that. And so we each take turns coaching each other. And I like even though I don't do as much coaching now cause of Crucible Leadership, I like to think I'm reasonable, if not pretty good. And for whatever reason, the technology just wouldn't work. There was an echo. And so I was like about 15 minutes late, everybody's waiting, finally get on. I'm flustered. And the person I was coaching, maybe we had different mindsets and I just could not get off a space. As a coach, if things don't work out, you always blame yourself. That is part of the profession. You never blame the client, even when you're tempted to. But it was really, I like to think I'm a good coach, but it was not that good because I was trying too hard.
Warwick F:
Because we weren't able to make progress, I was pushing and pushing and pushing, which you should never do as a coach. You should never [earn 00:09:25] it. So the reason, and I berated myself for days, a week or two, because this felt worse than some of the others because I like to feel like I'm a good coach, but it wasn't my best day. And even though you can say, even when you're good at something, you're not going to bat a thousand, I was just beside myself with, I mean, to a degree that's overstating it, but there are also other people listening. It's a mentor coaching deal. And they were able to observe my poor performance.
Gary S:
Perfect storm.
Warwick F:
And of course, in other weeks when other people coached, they were unbelievable. So I thought, "Okay, good, out of this cohort, I'm probably had the worst. Yeah. So what did people think of my level of coaching?" So yeah, I mean we all have our bad days and nobody else really cares. People understood the whole technology thing threw me a bit. And but yeah, I tend to be really hard on myself with perfectionism.
Gary S:
And there was an interesting point you made, as you were introducing some of the first of those stories, I think, or the second one, there was an interesting point you made where you talked about, And I hadn't thought about until just now, but the reach of perfectionism is sort of like burning the candle at both ends, meaning you mentioned, "How hard is it to remember to bring a helmet? There's one of two things you have to do. You have to have a helmet and you have to have a bike. I blew 50% of that. I didn't have a helmet." So there's the, what we would call, ruminating over, "Oh, how did that happen? Why did I do that? Why didn't I do that?", about what happened before the incident that leads you to feel perfectionistic, but then there's the projection into the future. And I have never told you this story, Warwick, but I'd already been working for you for several months when we had a meeting in Denver where we all got together along with Signal, the folks at your branding agency that were all big. I was still new to the team, but I was comfortable with the team. I knew that the team would have grace for me, but I was to give a presentation the morning after I arrived in Denver.
Gary S:
And while I was preparing for it, I realized I did not bring the little dongle thing that connects my computer to the screen where I could run through this extraordinary presentation in my mind that I had created. I spent, I've never told you this, but I spent, Warwick, at least an hour on the phone in full on panic mode with my wife saying, "Oh my gosh, I forgot. I forgot the thing. I can't do the presentation." And so that was the, "How could I have done that? I have a list of things that I have to have. And I brought four watches for two days in Denver, but I didn't bring the thing so I could do my presentation. How does that happen?" So again, how does it come about perfectionistic about how I blew it? And then the other end of that was perfectionistic about what was going to happen. "I'm not going to be able to do my presentation. Warwick's going to think I'm an idiot. All the folks at Signal are going to go, Oh, why did we ever introduce this guy to Warwick?" And it was.
Gary S:
I mean, Kelly, my wife could come out right now and say, "Yep, he's telling the exact truth," because it was so all encompassing. I could not see my way beyond what I had done wrong and what the ramifications might be. And I was beating myself up. And that is a terrible place to be.
Warwick F:
Yeah, it is. It's funny as you share perfectionist stories with each other, I can say, "Well, I mean, we would have been fine. It wouldn't have been a big deal." You can say, "Okay, so you had one bad day coaching. I'm sure they understood the technology." And other people often can understand much more than we can and are much less willing to judge us. I mean, some people are just judgmental by nature, but most people... But we're just so hard on ourself and we think about how does this show up? And I think at the root of it is we tend to tie our self worth to our performance. And what's ironic as both of us, as people of faith, from our perspective, there's a sense, well, God loves us unconditionally because of who we are not because of what we do. I mean, I go to a nondenominational church in Annapolis, Maryland. I'm even an elder. In theory, I should really know this stuff.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
And I do intellectually. I get it and I believe it very much, but clearly if I really, really believed it, then maybe my actions and my mindset would be a bit different. So this perfectionism thing, even when you know it's stupid, it runs so deep. I mean it's really complicated. I mean, we tend to compare ourselves with other people, like I did with the coaching thing. Everybody else did the lights out. Me, not so much. So you hear other people coaching and it's like, "Wow, you did fantastic. I mean, I guess I have to think of something to add that you could have done." With me, it was like the other way around. "There's got to be something he did positively." He didn't quite say that, but yeah. So we compare ourselves and we're certainly-
Gary S:
And the truth of the matter for that, Warwick, the truth of the matter is everybody else on that call doesn't even remember what happened. And they probably forgot it like five seconds afterward. And think about this. I hadn't thought about its application to perfectionism until you just told that last story and think about what's one of the most common things we say to someone when they if you're late to a phone call, you'll say, "Hey, I'm sorry I was running late. I had to put the dog out or do whatever it is." Most of the time we'll hear back from the person, "Oh, no problem." Right? Isn't that a very common thing?
Warwick F:
No problem. It's all good.
Gary S:
No worries.
Warwick F:
It's fine. Hey, It's good. Yeah. I mean, exactly.
Gary S:
And I have thought, and now I know why I think this way, I have thought, and I try not to do that with people because I always felt like if someone apologizes, even if I think it's silly, to them it's not silly or they wouldn't have apologized. And if I say, "No problem," I'm not allowing them to close the loop. I'm not allowing them to close that perfectionistic loop. So saying "No problem" to someone doesn't actually help them feel better because they don't feel perhaps released from their sin, their problem that they're talking about. So that's why I think when someone says, "Hey, I'm sorry that happened," rather than say "No problem," which is their reaction. They're not thinking about that, but to just offer back, "Yep. I forgive you. Yep." That helps them close it and that can help them not walk in perfectionism afterward.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, you don't have to beat them over the head, but certainly if they said, "I was late," you could say, "I get it. We've all been there. it's really okay," Or yeah, I mean, something like that to acknowledge, but realize that you're not judging them or you're not holding it against them. So yeah.
Gary S:
Right. They say, "I'm sorry," you say, "You're forgiven," or something that speaks to that and that can close the loop and make everything start moving ahead.
Warwick F:
Yeah, it is. I mean, I know we're going to dwell in a bit on what are some tips for counteracting it, but just to explore it a bit more, we compare ourselves and self worth. One of the insidious things about the perfectionism is we tend to want to move the goalposts. No matter what we achieve, it's like, "Okay, well, this was good, but there was another level." So if you're doing some presentation, "This was good. And I need to do A and B better next time." So you do A and B a better next time, you'll find something else. It's one thing to say, "Oh, there's something more I could do better." Great. Perfectionism is no matter how good a job you do, it's never good enough in your mindset. So that means you were doomed to failure always if you take that to its extreme. And it can almost mean anything short of perfection, which, because we keep moving the goalposts, is impossible. We design the game, we design the competition in a way that we can never win. Just when you thought you've got a touchdown, the goalpost are moved another 50 yards. There is no way you could ever possibly win And because we tie our self worth to that, it can just erode our sense of self worth left to its own devices.
Gary S:
And it can be emotionally exhausting. Think of the example you just used. We think we've gotten into the end zone and then we've moved the goalpost ourselves, 50 yards down the road. What's that going to lead to? Hey, it's 50 more yards, it's 50 more yards. There's 25 more yards. You're going to be exhausted physically if you were to do that and you're exhausted emotionally.
Warwick F:
Exactly. And you're going to be exhausted and it will tend to make you risk averse. "What's the point in trying, because I know I'm going to fail at least by my own definition of success and failure?" And the last thing the world needs is it's a bunch of risk averse people that won't go for their goals and their dreams. So actually, back in a Crucible Leadership framework, we're all about living lives of significance, lives on purpose, dedicated to serving others. We're about bringing a vision to reality that comes out of your design and your passion. Well, left to its own devices, a bit like weeds, ff you don't deal with perfectionism, it can mean that life of significance won't happen. That vision won't become reality. I mean, that's serious stuff. So we can joke about or other people might find it amusing anyway about the forgetting the bike helmet or boat or what other little incidents we have, but that kind of mindset, that's just a small manifestation of a larger problem. If left to its own devices, it can get in the way of your dreams becoming reality. So it's a serious thing.
Gary S:
Absolutely. And in those quote unquote small moments, they're not really small if you're perfectionistic about it because perfectionism makes a paper cut feel like a crucible. Perfectionism takes that thing that may be as small as a technological stumble in a coaching session that you really in many ways had nothing that you could've done differently, but that can feel as emotionally draining, as devastating as a true crucible experience the likes of which we talk about on this program all the time.
Warwick F:
Well, and imagine if that's how you deal with the paper cut, how are you going to deal with the real crucible? I mean, Oh my gosh. I mean, as listeners would know from previous podcasts and blogs, for me with the whole $2 billion takeover and losing 150 year old family business in Australia, I mean that is a big deal. It's not a paper cut, it's a massive crucible. And I never thought about it in terms of perfectionism, but because my self worth was so tied up in bringing the company back to the ideals of the founder and seeing it be well managed, for a lot of the 90s, I was just beating myself up mercilessly. I mean, it's sort of a cousin to perfectionism, maybe just self persecution. I guess it depends on the name and two sides of a similar coin, but it was the typical, as one guest we had recently, I think Professor Joseph Badarocco of Harvard Business School, talked about the difference between ruminating and perspective and-
Gary S:
And reflection.
Warwick F:
Exactly, reflection and ruminating. Well, I was doing a lot of both, but certainly a lot of ruminating. It's like, "Gosh, how could I have thought that would work? And I used the wrong advisors rather than the good ones. I didn't listen to the good advice and it's caused damage in my family. I have a Harvard MBA. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have assumed the family wouldn't sell out? How could I have loaded the company up with so much debt? Look what I did to people's lives and the company," and on and on. I was just like, "How could I be so stupid?" So it was that perfectionist mindset rather than an objective thing with, "Yeah, maybe there wasn't so smart," but I was 26, there were emotional things involved with family and stuff that happened to my dad. There were reasons maybe. There was some people with other agendas. It was complicated. Yeah. I made some mistakes, but it was a complex thing. And at 26, other people in that situation, their dad having died, there's a probably more objective nuanced look at it. But yeah, I was in full on self-flagellation, self persecution mode.
Warwick F:
So the long and short of it is when you come to big crucibles, you have a perfectionistic mindset, I mean, it can cause years of damage and despondency and self-flagellation, which is just not healthy for you or anybody else.
Gary S:
And let me ask you this question, Warwick. It's 30, I'm terrible at math, but it's more than 30 years since that takeover bid. Are there still times that you, even for a second, beat yourself up? Are there still times when you think about it? Because you have to live in it every day with Crucible Leadership. Are there still times as you talk to interviewers about it, as you come on the podcast and talk about it, on this podcast and talk about it, are there times that perfectionism still manifests itself in even a fleeting feeling of "Man, I messed that up"?
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, I'm sure it does. I always believe with crucibles is even if you get over them, there's still a scar. I have to say, it's much less than it used to be. And part of that's because I've had years to think about it. And I talk about this so much because it's part of the cornerstone of the Crucible Leadership origin story, if you will, that it does get easier when you've talked about it for the 10, 20th, 100th time. And you talk about and people ask you, "Well, maybe there were some other things going on and it wasn't all your fault," or you come to accept it. So it's actually considerably less. I mean, it honestly is not nearly as bad as it used to be, which is somewhat of the miracle given how hard I am on myself. So it's really, it's not nothing but it's vastly less than it was, which is amazing.
Gary S:
And this would be a good time because one of my jobs on the podcast is to ensure that we are moving on with alacrity and we keep time And if we don't keep the time exactly where I think we should, then I ended up being perfectionistic and feeling bad about it because I'm like, "Oh geez, that went 10 minutes longer than I wanted it to." So we have talked work, we have talked here just sort of organically about some ways that perfectionism manifests in our lives. Our sense of self worth is tied with how we perform. We compare ourselves to others. Before we start talking about and move on to how do we combat perfectionism, are there any other examples or any other manifestations of perfectionism that you think it's important to share with listeners?
Warwick F:
I mean, I think we've kind of covered it. I mean, we do feel like that everybody else is judging us. We feel like we're defined by our own worst day. And it's just amazing that people aren't really focusing on us. They've got their own issues, their own problems, their own hopes and dreams. Everybody's not wandering around judging us.
Gary S:
Right. I have a quote. Every year when I have a birthday, I'll publish on Facebook. This last birthday was 55 years. So I'll say, "55 things I learned in 55 years." And I started this, I think, back when I turned 50. So I've been doing it for five, six years now. And one of them I always put on there is "I am less than my successes and I am more than my failures." And that's, I think, a good perspective for us to keep. The mountain top isn't our reality every day and the Valley isn't our reality every day.
Warwick F:
I think that's so profoundly true. You kind of know that you can never get over perfectionism, but how you really begin to try to deal with it is what we said at the outset is you cannot tie your sense of self worth to your performance, to your successes or failures as you eloquently say. Just because we score the winning touchdown, we kind of did incredible at that play recital in high school, it doesn't mean that we're the greatest thing since sliced bread, we're the second coming, we're just amazing. And so during those highs, just say, "Okay, be happy," be kind of like "That was great," but don't start thinking, "Oh wow. I'm just amazing."
Gary S:
Yeah. Don't start believing your own press clips, for sure. For sure.
Warwick F:
And the same thing goes for when you have times in which you don't do so good, don't believe you're the worst person that's ever lived, which you can go that way at the extreme. So that's really, it's a choice. It's a discipline. You've got to separate who you are as a person from what you do, what you do isn't who you are. And that requires a seismic mindset shift. It's probably the single biggest thing, and it's easy to say, but you've got to just be disciplined. It's really a daily issue we'll come back to in a moment, but yeah. Separate your sense of self worth and what you do from who you are.
Gary S:
And this idea, and you mentioned it, this reality that really other people who we share a life with, especially other people who just kind of pass through our lives. The other people who may have been on that counseling call that you were talking about, or that coaching call that you were talking about, they may have just been, not even people you know well. They were just people that were kind of passing through your life. They probably don't even remember your name, let alone some of the technical difficulties you had there. But we all think about that. We all think that person's going to think that I'm the dumbest person who ever lived. Well, that person doesn't even know you. "So this idea that other people typically could care less how we are performing at any given time," you write in your blog, "okay, your boss might care. That's true. But in general, if we fall short one day, even by other people's standards, they don't judge us. They see we're trying, and they give us the benefit of the doubt. They appreciate the fact that we're trying."
Warwick F:
And that's where I think a sense of humor is good. I don't always do well at that but if I was wise and more mature, when I forgot my bike helmet, it was, "Well, that was kind of dumb and stuff happens and there was a million details and somehow it didn't happen. Oh, well, the world's not going to end just because I forgot my bike helmet." I got another one. We had a fantastic bike ride. It was a great day. What's the big deal on a scratch on the boat, or as you say, the coaching call. People were like, "Yeah, I might've been flustered and it was a challenging situation and yeah, you pressed in too hard, but yeah, we've all done that." I mean, they were probably full of grace. So just realize how other people thinking about it. I think of another tip that's useful is that, I know it's easy to say, but give it your all and let go of the outcome. We're not defined by our outcomes. What's important is did you try your hardest? Absolutely did in the coaching call. I really tried to lean in, probably tried too hard, but give yourself a break and what I was also going to say is don't hold things too lightly. As I said before it's okay to laugh at yourself. We all have idiosyncrasies. I'm getting better at laughing at my own little foibles and the way of doing things.
Gary S:
Yeah. And it's true. That sense of humor part can be really critical, not only for you to feel better. And I'll give an example from our working relationship, Warwick. One of my roles on the podcast listener is to try to find guests that we can have on to talk to. And I'm looking all over the place in different places. I'm doing searches on failure and bouncing back, and then see who pops up in Google and I'm doing all kinds of stuff. I'm going to podcasts, guest sites to find people. And I'm not batting a thousand every time. I come up with an idea I think might work. And we've had experiences over the year that we've been doing this podcast or close to a year that we've been doing the podcast. I've had experiences where I thought a guest might be perfect And I present that guest to Warwick and Warwick, as the head of Crucible Leadership and my boss in that sense, Warwick will say, "Oh, well that might not work." And it's funny. I feel terrible in those moments, not just like I messed up, but I feel like I let you down when that happens.
Gary S:
But one of the things that I've been able to do, and I've noticed it's happened a few times, thankfully not hundreds of times that I've picked guests, that I've suggested guests that didn't work out, but I've then tried to crack a joke at my expense in a meeting and you'll laugh. And when I see you laugh at my joke about, "Yeah, well, I picked that wrong," or whatever it is, that helps relieve the pressure on me. I see that it's not a huge thing to you. So a sense of humor can help you as an individual feel better about yourself. It can also help you realize that those people you think are judging you, those people you think are mad at you, those people you think will never let you get over it, don't take it nearly as seriously as you think they do.
Warwick F:
They really don't. I mean, that is a good example. I mean, people judge you for your expertise and your effort. I know for me, if somebody is giving it their all and they're not batting a thousand, that's fine. They're making a big contribution. You're going to get a lot of grace points, so to speak, if you've had a history of not just expertise, but just you're all in and maximum effort. I mean, that's so true. I mean, one of the other things I think of with myself and I'm really trying to learn it is what hurts my ability to overcome perfectionism is I'm one of these people that you either do it a hundred percent or not at all. You're in fifth gear or in neutral. I'm hardwired to just absolutely give it my all in whatever I do. And that's not a bad quality, but that can translate into perfectionism. "Oh, I gave it my all and I only did 99% of what I wanted to do."
Warwick F:
And so I've really come to the point where, and this is hard for me to say, 75, 80, 80% or 85%, in a number of cases that's fine. When there's a bunch of things you're doing that's okay. Because for a perfectionist, 75 or 80%'s probably pretty darn good. And it's not that I want to settle, but when you've got millions of things to do, you can't always spend a thousand hours on every blog. Stuff wouldn't get done. So you've got to say, "Okay, I'm going to do the level best I can within a reasonable amount of time," whether it's prepping for a podcast or the book on crucible leadership that'll come out next year. Obviously I'll pay a lot of attention to that, But even then I want to get as close to 100%, but the book will never come out if I spent, to use that number again, a thousand hours reviewing every chapter and every edit. I mean, my gosh, if you go, "Okay, I think this is good enough." It's sounds sacrilegious to say good enough.
Warwick F:
That is just words I never utter, but for a perfectionist, it's okay to say, "You know what? I think, given the timeframe and given everything else that's going on, it's good enough. And I'm going to be okay with that." You've got to force yourself to say sometimes good enough is good enough.
Gary S:
Yeah. And that makes me think, and you mentioned him earlier, our interview with Dr. Joe Badaracco, who in his book about reflecting and the importance of finding time to reflect, that's one of his points. Aim for good enough. And he talked to us about it. We think that in order to reflect on what's going on in our lives and the important decisions we have to make, we think we have to go on a Tibetan retreat. And it's not like that. You can reflect while running. You can reflect while driving in your car. You can reflect anywhere you can do it. Aim for good enough, because if you aim for perfection, guess what? You're never going to get to reflect. If you aim for good enough, you're going to seize those moments that you can do that.
Warwick F:
Well, exactly. I mean, very few of us have time to go to the top of a mountain and reflect for a month. I mean, even though I'm extremely reflective, I don't like doing that. I tend to reflect, I mean, obviously like a number of people of faith, I have my daily quiet time and Scripture reading and all, but just as I'm in the shower, I'm having a walk, I'm reflecting and thinking all the time. That's just part of life. But you reflect and make a decision, but here's a very small example. One of the things we do with the blog is we've got to pick a photo. Well, I don't have 500 hours to spend to approve a photo in a blog. It's not that big a decision. The world won't end if the most perfect photo isn't found. That's a very good example of good enough is good enough. So we spend some degree of time trying to find the one that really fits the words and the concept we're trying to present. And then we make a decision and we move on.
Gary S:
Right. Hearing you talk about that reminds me of something I used to do. Both of us have newspaper backgrounds. I didn't own any, but I was editor for a few. And one of the things I would do on the city desk and the city editor for listeners who don't know is the guy who edits the copy for the local newspaper. He's the first set of content editing eyes on the stuff that goes in your local newspaper. And I used to have a phrase I would use or phrases I would use if I had like 15 stories coming in and I had only three hours to do them. Some stories would get what I called an A1 edit. They were going on the front page of the newspaper and they were going to get three reads through. I was going to read them backwards to make sure there were no typos. They were going to get my A-plus effort. They were going to get a 100%, but I also had what I called my C5 edits. And those were the stories that were somewhat less important that were inside the newspaper. And they got a good effort, but they didn't get three reads.
Gary S:
They didn't get all of that stuff. They got, "Let's get it done. Let's make it as good as it can get and let's move it along the line." So I think that applies in so many areas of our lives. And, as Joe Badaracco said, aiming for good enough is not heresy or sacrilege or giving up or not doing it right. It's recognizing your limitations and acting in a way that allows you to put your best foot forward for the best things that advance what your vision is.
Warwick F:
That's so well said. So for instance, the level of effort that I'm going to give to reviewing a chapter of the book that's coming out next year is going to be more, maybe considerably more, than reviewing a image for a blog That's going to come out and one should receive a whole lot more effort and attention. It's like, to use your analogy, it's the front page story versus something that's going to be on page 35, that's going to have one paragraph and it's going to be buried somewhere.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
One of the other things I think it would be useful to talk about because being a reflective person and thinking, "Okay, well, we all agree perfectionism is a bad thing. And don't go overboard with your level of effort, depending on the challenge and how important it is." But one of the things I think has helped me is just have a sense of, it's going to sound a little pop cultureish, but sort of daily gratitude. And I don't know, they do it every day, but I kind of, maybe it's a spiritual thing, but I just, in my case, thank God for the many blessings that I have, wonderful wife, three great kids. I love what I do with Crucible Leadership. I have an amazing team. I've got so much to be thankful for. So I try to just look at, somehow when you're so thankful for what's happening, the perfectionistic thing, it shouldn't directly correlate, but I think it can help.
Warwick F:
And I think it's also okay to look back and say, "Okay," not to sort of dwell on the successes to say, "Oh, look how wonderful I am," but just, but just be thankful for the things that you've been able to be a part of. I've been on two nonprofit boards, my kids' school and have been an elder at church, and I've been involved in strategic planning and some governance stuff and coaching. And I've got this book about to come out and love the podcasts we do And the blogs. I have a lot of things that I'm grateful for and some things that I do poorly, but there are some things I actually do well. And that's not said because of hubris or arrogance, but it's like, if you can honestly say to yourself, "I'm actually making a contribution. I'm living a life of significance to best degree possible or at least to a reasonable degree. There are some things I do well, there hopefully are some people I bless and even in some small way, then maybe I'm not a total screw up. Maybe I'm worth something."
Warwick F:
I mean, I know my faith tells me, God loves me irrespective of what I do. I know that. So I need to own that. But objectively, there are some things I do, which is maybe not very spiritual, but objectively that says I'm probably worth something anyway, because there are some things I've done that have been okay, if not good. So therefore if I fall short, why should I beat myself up? So this concept of almost like a daily exercise, gratitude is really and thankfulness, an objective view of who you are, not this jaundiced, "I'm a screw up," because few of us are that bad.
Gary S:
I have this thing I do every night on social media before I go to bed and because I'm a word guy and like to think I'm clever, I call it Grata Today. So it's my gratitude for today. So I'll go on Facebook and I'll type Grata Today, colon, and then I'll just list one thing that I was grateful. For last night, it was how fantastic my wife's chili tasted like eight months after she made it because we vacuum sealed it. So it was like, not only did I get a good meal, but I realized what a great buy was to buy a vacuum sealer. That was my gratitude for the day. Not a big thing, but it was something that I could focus on that made me go, "Yep." Especially in the time of COVID and some of the things that are going on in the country to be able to find those things that you can hang on to and be grateful for, that's extremely important.
Warwick F:
I think it is. And yeah, some other tips for dealing with this, because I fully admit that dealing with perfectionism, this is one tough challenge and speaking of perfectionism within perfectionism, but I think of dealing with perfectionism, like weeding, is you really got to be very disciplined. So when you feel that sense coming that, "Oh, here we go." It could be a small issue or even a big, but a small issue. You just feel those feelings. Two or three thoughts. One is even if it's something little, like "I forgot the bike helmet," somebody like me, I'll say to myself, "Okay. I know I'm beating myself up today, but tomorrow's another day and I probably feel better tomorrow because I can't magically switch off my feelings." Just give yourself a break, realize it could take a day or so and that's okay. That almost eases the tension. And then sometimes what I do is in my case, talk to Gail, my wife, or if it's something to do with Crucible Leadership, I might chat to some people on the team. With this whole coaching thing, I think I've mentioned it behind the scenes to a number of folks that I work with and somehow it makes it easy to deal with. They say look, "I get it. We've all been there."
Warwick F:
And when you have that empathy and they're walking with you, a combination of time and being able to talk it through with others, even if they say the predictable, "It's okay. We've all been there," that level of empathy and understanding that definitely helped with the whole coaching incident. So bottom line is be proactive. Don't let those weeds grow. Deal with it. Yes. It'll take time. And when you feel those feelings come up, just try to bang them away, just squash them. It's like, "Okay, I'm not defined by this. I know it's stupid. Stuff happens." Talk it through with others and just try to be disciplined and not let those emotions take hold and just be objective about it and not defined by forgetting a bike helmet or a poor coaching performance.
Warwick F:
Think of all the other things that you're doing. Come on, be objective, be realistic, laugh at yourself for being so silly and so hard on yourself. Talk it through with others. There are practical things that are not going to switch those negative emotions off overnight, but they will help. There's no question in my mind. There are things you can do that will help.
Gary S:
Absolutely. And that is a good point, Warwick, where I would talk about landing the plane, because I'm perfectionistic about timekeeping, and I'm like, "Oh, no. I don't want to run too long." But here's something I've never told you as well about my perfectionistic streak. Go back, listener, and listen to the last five minutes of any podcast you want up until the last couple of ones. And when I say, "We're getting to the point where we have to land the plane," and I'll say, "The captain's turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. The landing gear's going down." I've also said this, "I see the guys on the runway, waving those flashlights." I said that five or six, seven, eight times, until Kelly, my wife, over dinner one time, said, "You realize you say that, but they don't do that when the planes land because they'd get hit by the planes." She said, "They don't do that. That's not a sign of landing the plane, sweetie. That's a sign of getting the planes lined up to take off and stuff."
Gary S:
And I'm like, "Ooh, boy, do I feel stupid that that's out there on 25 podcasts." So have grace for me, listener. Yeah, but as we wrap up, Warwick, I think one of the places to go to that I think is critical for all that we've talked about and that is this idea of being able to forgive yourself when you have done those things that have kicked in your perfectionistic cycle. And I want to read something that I found from Psychology Today that talks about the power of forgiving yourself and how you do it. The first line of this really struck me. It says, "When we've done something quote unquote wrong, we register it in our nervous system and if we try to forgive ourselves for something without releasing the underlying emotion or belief that we've attached to it, forgiveness just doesn't take. No matter how hard you try to forgive, you continue to beat yourself up for whatever happened, because your nervous system tells you to."
Gary S:
So you really have to release that negative emotion, those things that you talked about. Over time you were able to release, to talk through, what happened with the takeover. You were able to talk to members of the team about the coaching kerfuffle. It's really important, in forgiving yourself, to let that release go, because your nervous system, there's a physical, emotional thing that happens when you hang onto feeling like you were wrong and you messed up.
Warwick F:
And not only are you going to dwell on it, but it will stop you doing positive things in the future. It will be like a 10 ton weight. It will stop you taking risks. It will stop you moving forward. I might make that mistake again, so it's important to forgive yourself, and if it's a small issue, you need to forgive yourself for forgetting a helmet, well, maybe you do if you're beating yourself up for it and think you're a terrible person, but you've just got to be disciplined and deal with, realize we all make mistakes. I mean, if you're willing to show grace to others, and most of us are, then isn't it reasonable that you should deserve as much grace as you're willing to show others? It just makes no sense, so you just got to be disciplined and not let those negative, perfectionistic voices take root. As we said before, sometimes good enough is good enough and we're all going to have the bike helmet incident or "I can't believe I thought it was flashlights landing the plane." It's like, we're not pilots.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
If you were a pilot, you would never make that mistake, but we're not pilots and that's okay. Maybe there's a couple of pilots listening to the podcast who go, "Pff. That's, come on, really?" But even then, who cares? I mean, they're not going to unsubscribe to the podcast because you mentioned flashlights rather that something else.
Gary S:
I certainly hope not.
Warwick F:
If they do, then oh, my gosh, what's their problem? But, yeah, I mean, we just need to have a bit more sense of humor and just lighten up on ourselves, which we just need to.
Gary S:
Well, the plane has landed and there were no men or women on the runway with flashlights when that happened. I want to conclude this one, Warwick, differently than I normally do. Normally I'll say, "Here's three or four takeaways you can get from the show." I'd like challenge listeners to do a little something off of this episode, and that is to take what you've heard as Warwick and I have had this discussion and apply it. Forgive yourself if you are still ruminating on something that went wrong. Recognize that you are less than your successes and more than your failures. Find something you've heard here and put it into practice. Take that first step. We interviewed a guy on the show, Mike Valentine, he used to be a steel hanger. He would walk the steel in the skyscrapers and he would talk about what you learn when you're walking steel on a skyscraper that's being built is that you got to take the first step, because if you don't get that one right.
Gary S:
You've got to take the first step carefully. You've got to take the first step intentionally, because there's no second step if the first step's wrong. Take that first step, listener. If you've heard anything in this conversation about perfectionism that resonates with you, take the first step to arrest it, to overcome it. And here's the thing. I'll leave with this. You don't have to be perfect about how you release your perfectionism. It's a process. What Warwick and I have described here is a process. It's okay to have that process play itself out. Thank you for spending time with us as we've had this conversation and remember that your crucible experiences, be they big, major ones that everybody would recognize as crucibles or maybe some of your crucible experiences are those paper cuts that feel like crucibles because you can't let go of a feeling of perfectionism surrounding them, whatever those crucible experiences are, they're your crucible experiences. Your pain is just that, your pain, and it's real to you.
Gary S:
But remember that if you learn the lessons of those crucibles, if you don't wallow in those crucibles, and you apply those lessons, it's not the end of your story. In fact, it can be the beginning of the next chapter of your story, which will be the best chapter of your story because it will lead to something that Crucible Leadership exists to point you toward and that is a life of significance.
