Back in the day, as the Beyond the Crucible brand was being developed in its earlier form of Crucible Leadership, we had a team member question whether she had ever experienced one of those setbacks and/or failures that Warwick had dubbed “crucible moments.” After some discussion and reflection, she changed her mind. She realized that there were in fact moments in her personal and/or professional life that had “changed the trajectory of her life.” She had never noticed before the impact those crucible moments had made on her journey.

As the message spread — through Warwick’s book Beyond the Crucible: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, speeches he’s given and interviews he’s done, the more than 100 guests from all walks of life who’ve told their own stories on our podcast — we’ve crafted a perspective that crucible experiences are common occurrences. We have even commissioned a statistically valid study that tells us that 72 percent of more than 11,000 people surveyed so far say they have “experienced an event so traumatic or painful that it fundamentally altered the course” of their lives.

Those are big numbers. Meaningful numbers. But not unanimous numbers. They raise the very real possibility that at least a few of you reading these words might be among that 28 percent who would answer “no” to the survey question mentioned above. Which makes me think, in our mission to share with those who engage with us that their worst day doesn’t have to define them, how can you know if you’ve had a crucible? Three thoughts come to mind:

1. Focus on the pain. 

One thing all crucibles have in common, no matter how different their circumstances may be, is that they hurt. Searingly so in many cases, but not always. And while all crucibles involve pain, it’s a stretch to believe all pain represents a crucible. How do you know the difference? Focus on those words from the survey — “changed the trajectory of your life.” As Warwick has put it, “Who you were before the crucible is not who you are after.” And many times, those changes amid the pain can have positive developments — blessings, even. You’ve developed resilience, come to a deeper understanding of how you are designed.  You’ve discovered what you love to do, and maybe what you definitely don’t love to do. Reflect on all of that, tracing back any ways you’ve been reshaped by your pain — even if you still find it hard to break free of it. If who you are now is different from who you were then, chances are good you’ve had a crucible.

2. Are you feeling motivated to live life with a different focus? 

Living a life of significance is the north star of the counsel and stories we share at Beyond the Crucible. Crucibles have a way of not just causing us pain — but giving us fresh perspective. Most of our podcast guests have discovered as they moved beyond their crucible that they felt the tug to live life more intentionally, focused on something they are off-the-charts passionate about and which in real ways involves serving and inspiring others. If you’re experiencing a nagging sense of malaise about the direction your life is headed, in some cases has been headed for decades, it’s a good bet those emotions can be traced to a crucible. Even what we call a “quiet crucible.” It may not be rooted in searing pain, but a feeling of “there’s got to be more to my life.” If you find yourself wondering “Is this all this is?” the root of that question is quite likely a crucible.

3. Keep your radar up. 

One of the indisputable things about crucibles is that they can come at any time, and they can come again. They can be triggered by any tragedy or trauma. We think of many of the stories and insights from them that we share here as inoculations that can help you weather the next crucible you encounter, helping your bounce back with more focus and fortitude, even if you have a hard time identifying the last one you encountered.

Reflection:

Listen to our Beyond the Crucible Podcast Series: Crucible Hacks! Tune in each week and play along with our bonus worksheet to win a signed copy of the bestselling book, Crucible Leadership, Embrace Your Trials To Lead A Life Of Significance.*

We are in the midst of our special summer podcast series, Crucible Hacks, in which we’re taking nine weeks to unpack ways to make bouncing back from a crucible simpler (there’s a 10th episode that’s not about hacks but about giving you insight into how to apply the hacks). We’re spotlighting the best practices listeners can undertake at each step of the journey from tragedy to triumph, guiding them along the path of what we call the Beyond the Crucible Refining Process.

The hacks we’re talking about aren’t quick fixes, but rather ideas and inspiration to help them move from “This happened TO me” to “This happened FOR me” In the end, our hope is to give them a roadmap drawn with 19 hacks that will help them chart their unique course to a life of significance.

Already, Warwick and I have discovered something pretty interesting in recording the shows. As we do for every episode of Beyond the Crucible, we prepare by sketching out broadly the ground we want to cover. But we’re discovering once we hit “record” that fresh ideas bubble up. That’s an immense encouragement to us because even though we’re the guys offering the hacks, we’re learning and sharing new things. It’s always a good sign when the people who are hoping to teach you something learn something themselves.

Case in point: our discussion about hacks to help listeners understand how they were refined by their crucible.

The first one was called “Face the Demons.” 

It focused on exhorting listeners to think about and write down the worst thing about their crucible. What hurt most? Knocked them down or set them back most? In what ways did it hurt them?

Most importantly, we asked, “How can you reframe the experience?” If it was the loss of a job, what new opportunities has it opened up? If it’s a terrible tragedy like the death of a loved one, dig deeply into the ways in which that individual blessed your life. As we were discussing these points, another thought came to us: Facing the demons is only half the battle. Here’s what I said on the show:

“I just realized maybe a better way to frame this hack is ‘face the demons and make them angels.’ Face these terrible things that happened, these things that really knocked you for a loop, but put a different face on them. Take the horns off and put the wings on.”

That wasn’t just me monologuing. It was a summation of what we’ve learned from the vast majority of the 100-plus guests we’ve had on the show – Warwick included. Crucibles, we’ve heard time and time again, provide the seeds for people being able to say their crucible was a gift. It’s what they learn in this refinement stage, what they glean from the demons they’ve made angels, that helps them get to that place where tragedy takes a big step toward triumph.

Our second hack in the “Refined” episode was what I dubbed The 3×5 Card. 

It was an attempt at being clever, not referring to the size of the card, per se, but what we urged listeners to write on it. As I envisioned it, we wanted them to jot down 3 to 5 things they learned about themselves from their crucible experience. To write a short letter expressing thanks for those lessons. And, maybe the most important part, not to keep it to themselves. That’s because, time has taught us, overcoming crucibles is a team sport; so we encouraged them to share their learnings with their spouse, a close friend, a mentor, anyone they trust who knows them well and has an interest in seeing them move beyond their worst day

Warwick liked that idea, but he had an even better one. Here’s what he said during the show:

“Once you write down those learnings, consider flipping that 3×5 card over and writing down a few blessings — three to five blessings — that have come out of your crucible. That might seem like an obnoxious question, but I’d say pretty much every guest we’ve had could do this exercise. They could write down three to five learnings, and they could write down three to five blessings.

“And this isn’t just, ‘I’m going through an exercise,’ ” he added. “They profoundly believe in those blessings.”

What we realized, after laying out that second hack, was that such reflection can be transformational. The card that results can be something kept on their desk that they refer to to remind themselves of what they learned,  where they’re going and why they feel blessed by what started out as only painful. Instant encouragement and insight. Balm for their spirit and soul.

As this blog is published, we are not yet halfway through our Crucible Hacks series. If you haven’t yet checked it out, we encourage you to visit beyondthecrucible.com and give it a listen. Each episode is about 30 minutes — an intentionally breezier listen than our traditional interview shows, a nod to the busyness of summer that grips us all.

We hope you enjoy what you hear and, more importantly, are inspired and equipped by it.

Reflection:

Listen to our Beyond the Crucible Podcast Series: Crucible Hacks! Tune in each week and play along with our bonus worksheet to win a signed copy of the bestselling book, Crucible Leadership, Embrace Your Trials To Lead A Life Of Significance.*

I don’t say a whole lot during the Beyond the Crucible podcast I cohost with Warwick.

As I explain to guests before we hit record, if he and I were a sports commentating team, he’d be the play-by-play announcer, the one with most of the insights and mic time; and I’d be the color analyst, whose job it is to make sure the audience catches and understands the important moments of action on the field.

One of the ways that plays out most often is my pointing out to listeners how the guest’s crucible experience, while its details differ greatly from Warwick’s story of losing his family’s 150-year-old media dynasty in an ultimately failed $2.25 billion takeover, nonetheless shares many emotional beats with his journey.

It’s astounding, sometimes, how a guest whose worst day was suffering through abuse or addiction or being hit with a devastating physical injury or medical diagnosis uses the exact same language Warwick does to describe how it felt to be at the bottom of the pit … and needed to muster the same resilience to get out of that pit.

Reflecting on those moments led me to think it could be helpful to offer a primer on the kinds of crucibles we’ve encountered on 164 episodes of the podcast, and the universal lessons we’ve discovered that can emanate from them.

After all, I end every show by saying a variation on the theme that your worst day doesn’t have to define you; in fact, if you learn the lessons of your crucible, that worst day can lead to your best day because it can be the fuel to carry you to a life of significance.

In broad brushstrokes, we’ve discovered crucible experiences fall into five categories:

Business Crucibles

Warwick’s crucible was a business crucible. It was on his watch that four generations of family history was lost – at least tangibly.

Guests who’ve experienced business crucibles include Hank McClarty, who by his own admission grew a bit too cocksure as a successful financial planner and wound up unemployed living in a hotel with his two boys needing to rely on the establishment’s free breakfasts to get by.

Kelly Sayre hit a similar low in business – losing a job she thought had her on track to a great career because of a boss who didn’t deal squarely with her.

Physical Crucibles

We’ve heard from many guests who’ve endured life-changing physical crucibles.

Like David Charbonnet, a Navy SEAL who was left a paraplegic after a training accident.

Or Jason Schecterle, a police officer rear-ended in his squad car at a stoplight who nearly died from the fourth-degree burns he suffered.

And Andrea Heuston, who lapsed into a weeks-long coma after an ovarian cyst burst.

Life Crucibles

Among the guests whose life crucibles knocked them down were Donte Wilburn, who turned to selling drugs as a teenager and college student and was nearly killed when a sale went bad.

Adam Vibe Gunton, whose addiction to heroin was so debilitating he begged God to take his life.

And Katie Foulkes, an Olympic rower for her native Australia whose gold-medal dreams were dashed in a very public scandal involving one of her teammates.

Emotional Crucibles

And the emotional crucibles we’ve heard about have been many and varied.

From Esther Fleece Allen, who found herself abandoned by both parents as a teenager, to Chris Singleton, whose mother was murdered in a mass church shooting.

Quiet Crucibles

Quiet crucibles are the kind to which we dedicated our eight-part series on discovering your second-act significance. These are those moments in life when you find yourself questioning “Is this all there is?” You may not have been knocked off your feet, but you definitely feel stuck in an unfulfilling place.

That’s what Robert Miller felt, a successful lawyer who had dreamed since his teens of being a musician.

Nancy Volpe Beringer, too – who found her life’s calling as a fashion designer after a successful career as a union representative that still left her feeling something was missing.

I’ve not drilled down too deeply on any of these stories, because the focus of Beyond the Crucible is never as great on what our guests have been through as it is on how they got through their tragedies and turned them into triumph. And there are definite themes in their stories in bouncing forward from their setbacks and failures that each of us can lean into when we encounter our own crucibles. Here are just three:

1. Mindset is everything.

Our guests have universally come to view their crucibles not as things that have happened to them, but things that have happened for them. The traumas and tragedies they’ve experienced, they’ve come to believe, do not define them, but have refined them. Developing that perspective, is the only way to build a ladder to climb out of the pit.

2. Don’t go it alone.

Moving beyond your crucible is a team sport. What our podcast guests have done, what Warwick stresses as so important to do, is find and lean into fellow travelers. Family, friends, colleagues, professional counselors and coaches will provide insights and strategies to help you find the strength and resilience to rise out of the pit.

3. Take the first right step, then the next right step.

Very few of our guests have gone from tragedy to triumph in a one-and-done leap. Incremental gains have been the order of their recovery. As you allow your crucible to teach you more about how you are designed, what you are off-the-charts passionate about, you can begin to set your feet on the path of what a life of significance looks like for you. If will not just lead you out of the pit, it will lead you to a life lived on purpose, dedicated to serving others.

Crucible experiences come at us wrapped in myriad circumstances. As different as they may seem from each other on the surface, underneath the way we experience them, the things we must learn and do to overcome them are surprisingly similar. In that truth there is great hope that they are not insurmountable.

Reflection:

Ready to create a life you love?

We’ve just finished an entertaining and insightful series on our Beyond the Crucible podcast called BURN THE SHIPS. We interviewed seven guests from wildly diverse backgrounds who had one critical thing in common: They made bold, dramatic pivots in their lives, leaving one direction behind — even a lucrative or rewarding direction — to pursue something that to them is more fulfilling/daring.

From each one of those guests, we learned the very real stakes that accompany a “burn the ships” moment. Consider the meaning of the idiom, as defined in the Cambridge Dictionary: “If you are in a situation and you burn your boats/bridges, you destroy all possible ways of going back to that situation.”

That takes courage. Belief in your vision. Trust in your abilities. All three of those statements apply to the guests we interviewed.

From their journeys (and our own) we learned five crucial truths necessary to achieving a life of satisfaction and significance when determining to take a match to your ships:

1. Beware of “toxic persistence.”

That’s the counsel of Mike Beckham, who left behind a fulfilling executive career at a nonprofit ministry to apply his skills to the corporate world. He would go on to found the uber successful bottle, tumbler and accessories company Simple Modern – but not before an earlier effort fell short of gaining enough traction to generate a sustainable bottom line.

While the conventional wisdom in such a situation is to batten down the hatches and press on, he decided to burn another set of ships. That’s because, he told us, while mustering the pluck to stick to an idea through hard times is almost universally applauded, sometimes the wiser decision is accepting the reality that success is not in the cards.

“Persistence in the wrong context is more destructive than anything else,” he said. Having the moxie to live out that truth led directly to the multimillion-dollar success of Simple Modern.

2. Lean into your passion.

We heard this, saw evidence of it, from a few guests. One was Eryn Eddy, who was earning a nice living and building a nice career in the music industry, licensing her songs to popular TV shows, when something she did almost impulsively as a thank you to fans made clear she was even more dedicated encouraging others. After spray-painting the phrase “So Worth Loving” on TV shirts sent to her by her supporters, she saw the life-affirming hope those words gave to those who needed to embody the message. She burned her musical ships to devote herself to spreading that message more widely, establishing the apparel and accessories brand So Worth Loving.

Darwin Shaw had a similar experience when he walked away from a medical career in his native Britain. He became an E.R. doctor after years of education and training, but left it all behind for more creative pursuits like acting and filmmaking. He’s played the Apostle Peter in the record-breaking TV miniseries The Bible and been featured in two cinematic universes – James Bond and Marvel.  He offers this advice to others contemplating  similarly radical burning of their ships: “If you can hone in on what’s truthful for you and follow that, I don’t think you’re ever going to regret it.”

That’s the life our guest Joel Hungate is living today. A biomedical engineer by training, he’s been drawn to the adventure offered by the outdoors from an early age. After his mother died by suicide, he made some of her final words to him, “Just do it,” his life’s motto. That’s led to his appearance on Netflix’s survivalist reality series Outlast and prompted his pursuit of his life’s mission showing others how to live a life of “adventure readiness.” “It’s the next frontier in well-being; where health is a ‘means’ not an ‘end’ — where people are empowered with the inspiration and know-how to go places they never thought they would go, do things they never thought they could do, with a confidence and community they never imagined they would find, where adventure truly becomes a lifestyle.”

3. Do the inner work.

Finnian Kelly had accumulated his share of success – a prestigious military career, top-shelf entrepreneurship, star of a National Geographic channel documentary. But it all eventually failed him. Because he had never cared for the wounded soul he suffered as a boy, he told us, his world crashed around him in the wake of a difficult divorce. That’s when he finally did the inner work necessary to allow him to move on to a life of authentic purpose – to give him the courage to burn his ships. Today, he’s healed sufficiently to help others do the same as a speaker and coach who guides them into living with authentic intentionality.

Dan Wolgemuth also had inner work to do. For him, the shift from a corporate career that included a stint at General Electric during its heyday under the leadership of Jack Welch to leading the nonprofit ministry Youth for Christ only after he came to terms in his head and heart that he was not the author of his own life’s story. He had to hold his success with open palms to find true significance, he explained. “That burn the ship moment,” he told us, “had to happen first in my own soul.”

4. You don’t need all the details at the start if you have the direction.

The most dramatic story we heard from a guest was that of Donte Wilburn. He fell in with the wrong crowd in high school and started selling drugs, graduating to bigger deals as he worked to graduate from college. But then a sale went bad and he found himself with a gun barrel pressed against his forehead.

He survived that night, but still faced incarceration. Contemplating suicide as he awaited the outcome of his legal troubles, his mindset shifted when his mother told him repeatedly, “It’s going to be OK.” And it was. He was sentenced to work release and finished up his degree while working the only job he could find – washing cars at a detailing shop. He didn’t know where his life was going to end up after he burned the ships that got him on the wrong side of the law. But he kept sailing in the right direction.

It’s all become much clearer now. He graduated college and kept working his way up in the auto detailing business. He now owns it and mentors the teens and twentysomethings who work for him. “I know what change looks like because I had to do it myself,” he told us. “I found that my darkest time was the beginning of my best times.”

5. Little ships count, too.

It’s easy to think for a moment to qualify for burn-the-ships status, it needs to be an ocean liner you’re setting ablaze. That’s not true – at all. We learned that on our own journey, which we documented on the podcast series, when we changed our name from Crucible Leadership to Beyond the Crucible.

As we’ve explained, we realized that what we do day-in, day-out was less directed just at business leaders and less focused solely on Warwick’s personal story from setback to significance. We’ve become more about offering tools to help people turn their trials into triumphs.

That has been the inspiration for our free Life of Significance Assessment and our most ambitious undertaking to date, our Discover Your Second-Act Significance e-course. The shift in names is not a pivot from our mission and vision, but an adjustment. We sparked up some boats, but not our biggest vessels and not to sail to a completely different destination. It’s still igniting the ships, to be sure, but more of a controlled burn. And that takes its own kind of boldness.

Reflection:

Ready to create a life you love?

We’ve shifted from Crucible Leadership. And that opens up some very exciting opportunities for the future.

Stop a minute before you read any further and look at the page header on this blog. You’ll see it says Beyond the Crucible. That’s the new name of the business founded and led by Warwick Fairfax. We’re still all about hope and healing, helping you realize your worst days don’t have to define you; still committed to joining you on the journey from setback to significance, still dedicated to setting you on and helping you along the path that leads from trials to triumph.

The new name does not mean we have a new vision or mission. It means our vision and mission have been refined. That’s what we’ve been telling and showing you for the last five years – visions grow and change over time. Now we’ve taken steps to spotlight how that truth applies to us.

How has the Beyond the Crucible mission and vision grown since Warwick founded the company to share the lessons he learned about bouncing back after his $2.25 billion failure that cost his family the media dynasty started by his great-great grandfather?

Here are three desires that fueled the changes we’ve made:

1. We wanted to make clear we don’t just serve business leaders.

Crucible Leadership was the perfect name for what we did when we started. Warwick created the company to highlight the key takeaways from his book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, which he had written but not yet published. The book focused on how such things as faith, authenticity and perseverance led him to “get out of the pit,” as he puts it, of his crucible.

As our team worked to help Warwick find a great publisher (he did — Morgan James Publishing) and polish his manuscript, we started to add additional offerings besides this blog and his social media pages. The highest-profile addition was, of course, the Beyond the Crucible podcast, which premiered Nov. 5, 2019. In the going-on-four-years we’ve been doing the show (on which I am blessed to be his cohost), we increasingly discovered something important from the scores of guests we’ve interviewed: not all of their crucibles were leadership — or business — related. In fact, it was far more common to talk with men and women who had been through personal tragedies — physical illness or injury, abuse, the death of loves ones and other difficult life challenges.

What we were doling day-in, day-out — especially after Warwick’s book launched as a Wall Street Journal best-seller — became more focused on offering tools to the widest possible audience. That has been the inspiration for things like our Life of Significance Assessment and our most ambitious undertaking to date, our Discover Your Second-Act Significance e-course. It became obvious to us that we needed to reset the brand to encompass all that we had become. Hence expanding the Beyond the Crucible name beyond the podcast to the organization as a whole.

2. We wanted to emphasize our pivot from primarily telling Warwick’s story and the stories of other leaders to helping you live out yours.

We help you live out your story through the stories from our many podcast guests, and from the insights and tools that we offer and will be offering.

One of the truly breakthrough moments for Beyond the Crucible as a brand has been the data we’ve collected from those who’ve taken the Life of Significance Assessment. What we have learned from the more than 5,200 respondents is that nearly three-quarters of them — 72 percent — report they have experienced something so traumatic or painful that it fundamentally changed their life. That’s a result not from a quick-and-dirty online poll; it’s a scientifically valid number. And it’s just one of the numbers that provides great insight into not just the frequency of crucible experiences, but their effects on those who go through them.

What does that mean for you? The insights we’ve gleaned not just from Warwick’s story, but also from our wide variety of podcast guests, can now be augmented by statistically relevant perspectives about what those hit by and bouncing back from crucibles go through. We have both quantitative and qualitative evidence to help you better understand the setbacks you’ve endured and muster a battle plan to move past them. Stay tuned. You’ll be hearing much more about this — and given the chance to seize new tools rooted in those revelations enroute to your life of significance — in the weeks and months and years to come.

3. We wanted to offer you more and deeper opportunities to interact with us.

An important thing to note about the change that comes with our updated branding is that we’re moving from a label (Crucible Leadership) to an action-oriented promise (Beyond the Crucible). We hope you will engage with us from this point on by asking a simple question: How can this offering or product help me move beyond my crucible?

This is not a minor point. We want you to think of us more than ever as a partner in helping you take an action that moves you closer to the life of significance you’ve always wanted to lead. To that end, Beyond the Crucible will offer you greater opportunities to interact and ask questions of Warwick and others on the team. Be on the lookout for more live Q-and-A’s and real-time teachings. In fact, let’s not wait to make our communications to you more an invitation to dialogue than purely a monologue. If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve gifted us with your attention through this blog. Now allow us to gift you in return. Take a moment right now to ask us a question and send it to info@beyondthecrucible.com … And please keep that email address handy to use anytime you have a question or suggestion you want to send our way.

We look forward to walking alongside you as you move beyond your crucible with Beyond the Crucible.

Reflection:

Ready to create a life you love?

To be a “Scrooge” during the holiday season carries the connotation of being miserly and miserable, prizing possessions and position over people. As written by Charles Dickens in his 1843 novella A Christmas Carol and brought to motion-picture life in more than a dozen movie and TV adaptations, Ebenezer Scrooge has become synonymous with “a crabby, selfish old man who hates Christmas.”

Of course, “Bah, humbug!” is not the end of Scrooge’s story… In fact, here at Beyond the Crucible, he could be the poster character for, as we often say, not letting your worst day define you, for moving beyond setback and failure. Especially this year, in fact, one in which we’ve spent a good deal of time exploring how to discover your second-act significance, there may be no better character who comes around every Christmas to study as a means of learning how we each can move from “Is this all there is?” to “This is all I’ve ever wanted.”

We devoted an entire podcast series to the stories of guests no longer willing to suffer through that frustration, who sought to make changes in what they did for a living and how they did their living. Ebenezer Scrooge doesn’t come to that crisis point of his own volition, of course; he is not self-aware enough to feel stuck, dissatisfied with the direction of his life or discontented that he’s not living with a sense of purpose and calling.

But those visits he receives from the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future – what are they if not a word-for-word summary of the 3 Steps to Significance Process we’ve laid out in our first-ever e-course “Discover Your Second-Act Significance”?

Those are the beats of any faithful filming of A Christmas Carol. Let’s examine them as they play out in the 1951 version, considered the most classic telling, to help us navigate our own journey to an authentic life and career filled with deeper meaning, purpose, fulfillment and joy.

  1. Learn lessons from the ghost of Christmas past. 

The first ghost takes Scrooge back to his childhood, lonely at boarding school, rejected by his father who sent him there. “Nobody has ever cared for me,” he sadly tells his beloved sister, Fan, who comes to tell him their father has relented in his disdain for the boy because their mother died while giving birth to him. The ghost also shows him scenes of the parties and dances he used to attend with friends at Christmastime as a young adult, his sweet courtship of his girlfriend Alice and the people-first priorities of his first boss, Mr. Fezziwig. “It’s not just for money we spend a lifetime building up a business,” the older man says after a Mr. Jorkin, with decidedly different thoughts about what’s most important in life, tries unsuccessfully to buy him out.

But then life gets harder, and Scrooge gets colder, in the scenes the ghost shows him. Fezziwig loses his business to Jorkin, who hires Scrooge and pairs him with the more cutthroat Jacob Marley to run the operation. Fan dies giving birth to her son Fred, Scrooge’s nephew. Jorkin embezzles funds from the company and Scrooge and Marley make it right with the board as a means of taking over the firm. Alice breaks off their engagement, saying the harshness of the world has made Ebenezer callous and fearful. As Marley lies dying, Scrooge refuses to leave work even a moment early to say a final goodbye to his partner. He misses the chance but feels no remorse; in fact, he takes the man’s money and house.

These insights from the ghost of Christmas past mirror what we urge those who take our e-course to examine: what they both enjoyed and didn’t enjoy doing when they were younger and what they can learn from those experiences to help them craft a new vision to launch them into their second act. The journey through his past reminds Scrooge he once lived life in pursuit of something more than making money. He once not only liked people but loved them. The ghost suggests it’s not too late for him to have all of that back again, to recover the earnestness and kindness he lost as he grew older and more jaded. He dejectedly says, “I’m too old and beyond hope.”

But the next ghosts prove to him that isn’t true…

  1. Plant seeds of a new vision from the ghost of Christmas present.

The second ghost brings Ebenezer into the lives of the people he knows, and treats shamefully, in the present day. They can’t see him, but he can see them. First his nephew Fred and his friends and family, who are having a festive holiday gathering and talking about Uncle Scrooge in kindly terms. They feel love for him, but a little pity, too. Next they visit Alice, who is caring for the poor at a shelter.

Then on to the home of Bob Crachit, Scrooge’s clerk. The Crachits have an ill and disabled son, Tiny Tim, but they are enjoying a warm Christmas together – their patriarch not saying a cross word about his boss despite the demanding, compassionless way he is treated by him.

In these moments Scrooge is allowed to see himself through the eyes of others – those whom he treats with indifference and disdain. The ghost tells him the purpose of the visits is to show him “the good in men’s hearts,” but Ebenezer sees more than that. He recognizes the same good that was once in his heart. This is the moment in A Christmas Carol that Scrooge takes stock of his life and wonders “Is this all there is?” Working long hours for money he hoards, no one to love and no one to love him? Even before the final spirit appears, Scrooge is beginning to imagine what a new vision for his life might look like.

  1. Transformation is possible courtesy of the ghost of Christmas future. 

When the ghost that shows Scrooge the future shows up, he has been moved enough by what his first two visitors showed him to ask a critical question: “Surely the ends will change?”

When he is shown his destitute servants showing off the meager possessions they took from him after he died, when he is given a glimpse of the Crachits after the death of Tiny Tim, he emphatically declares, “I am not the man I was!” He has come to realize it is not, indeed, too late for him to change. Not too late for him to live his life differently. Not too late for him to launch a second act of true significance.

He awakens Christmas morning “light as a feather” and “happy as a schoolboy.” Not only has his outlook changed, but his personality and even his visage has. He happily tosses a coin to a boy on the street – the kind of urchin he would have derided before – and asks him to bring the butcher’s grandest turkey anonymously to the Crachits. The next day, when Bob returns to work a bit late, Scrooge pretends for a moment to be his old taskmaster self, poised to scold his clerk. Instead, he raises the man’s salary and when his largesse is met with a befuddled look says, “I haven’t taken leave of my senses, Bob. I’ve found them!” The character and talents he lived by in his younger days have been reignited. By the end of the movie, the narrator says that Ebenezer Scrooge has not only become a man “who knew how to keep Christmas well,” but also a second father to the healed Tiny Tim. God bless them, every one, indeed.

Scrooge’s journey in A Christmas Carol may not be a common road to take to find a life of second-act significance, but as different as the details of his story might be from ours, we all can still learn from it the steps to take to find the fulfilling existence we’ve always wanted. It begins with understanding where we’ve been and what gifts and abilities got us there; then crafting a unique vision rooted in our wiring now that we are again tapped into it; and finally making that vision a reality by taking one small step at a time toward living life on purpose in service to others.

Even without the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future, that’s a recipe for banishing the “Bah, humbug!” from our lives.

Reflection:

Ready to create a life you love?

When the Beyond the Crucible team was brainstorming a name for our special fall podcast series on navigating through crucible experiences involving the loss of a loved one, or of a dream, or of an aspect of our identity, we were a little concerned about the name we settled on: Gaining From Loss. Was it too glib? An oxymoron? Would listeners – not to mention our guests sharing the details of their losses – think it insensitive?

At the root of our trepidation we wondered: Is it a bridge too far to say that a loss that devastates us can lead to a gain that enriches us?

We worried unnecessarily, as it turned out. Each of the five guests we interviewed agreed that gain could indeed come from loss. That it indeed came from their losses. With the holiday season now upon us – serving to heighten the intensity with which so many of us struggle with losses both old and new – we’ve culled key learnings from each of our guests to help you on your journey of gaining from loss.

Here are five practical action steps to lead you along that path:

  1. Be patient. 

Jason Schechterle was barely a year into his dream career as a police officer in 2001 when his squad car was hit from behind while stopped by a taxi traveling more than 100 mph. The explosive fire in which he was trapped for minutes left him in a coma for two and a half months, initially robbed him of his sight and led to severe scarring and disfigurement as he endured 56 surgeries to first save, and then improve, his life.

Through the physical and emotional trauma of all that he lost in the crash, he has come to live by a motto he encourages those he talks to as a motivational speaker to live by: “Sometimes the most beautiful, inspirational changes will disguise themselves as utter devastation. Be patient.”

His patience led to him and his wife adding a third child to their family, realizing his dream of working as a homicide detective and embracing all he’s not just suffered through, but grown through. “I have gained everything,” he says today, “and lost nothing.”

  1. Work to change what you cannot accept.

Shelley Klingerman’s police office brother, Greg, was murdered last year in an ambush while he walked to his car after work. She was devastated by the loss but refused to let that evil act be the period on the sentence of Greg’s life. She refused to “accept what she could not change” and instead dove into changing what she could not accept.

She launched Project Never Broken, a nonprofit committed to extending hope and healing through stressing resiliency to other law enforcement officers and their families struggling through the aftermath of trauma. In doing so, she is ensuring the true essence of Greg lives on while also serving others.

  1. Understand there is room for your pain on the other side. 

Kayla Stoecklein lost her husband, Andrew, to suicide in 2018, leaving her a widow with three young boys to raise and an unexpected, uncertain future to face. What she learned as she moved forward, tentatively at first, was that “It’s a daily choice to welcome and acknowledge the pain, and it’s a daily choice to welcome and chase the joy.”

“The wounds we carry with us are not obstacles to simply get over,” she says. “Rather, our wounds are the way through. And loss gives us new eyes to see the grace threaded through all humanity.”

She wrote a book — Rebuilding Beautiful: Welcome What Is, Dare to Dream Again, and Step Bravely into What Could Be — to both document her journey in gaining from loss and to help guide others along the same path. It is a 256-page encouragement that “a beautiful world waits for us on the other side of loss. A world so expansive it has room for our pain.”

  1. Intentionally cultivate joy as you continue to grieve. 

Marisa Renee Lee’s mother lost her battle with breast cancer when her daughter was just 25 years old. In the near decade and a half since then, Lee has crafted a successful career working on Wall Street and in the Obama White House. Her successes, she says, have come not in spite or even because of the loss she’s lived through. She has been able to live with the loss and thrive beyond it because she’s also never stopped living with the love.

As she puts in in her book, Grief Is Love: Living with Loss, “We are taught that grief is something that arrives in the immediate aftermath of death, and while that’s certainly true, it’s not the whole story. Grief is the experience of navigating your loss, figuring out how to deal with the absence of your loved one forever. It’s understanding that the pain you feel because of their absence is because you’ve experienced a great love. That love doesn’t end when they die, and you don’t have to get over it.”

In fact, she says, a critical key to managing grief is to find joy to accompany it through such means as leaning into celebrations – even if it’s for obscure holidays – and focusing on serving and encouraging others. She calls that “Being a Lisa” – her mother’s name – because that’s who her mother was.

  1. Live as a good ancestor to those who come after you. 

Steve Leder, Senior Rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, says that even after officiating more than 1,000 funerals, it wasn’t until his own father died that he felt in his heart, rather than just knowing in his head, the depth and breadth of losing a loved one. The lessons he’s learned and the applications he’s still walking out have made vivid to him that the losses of all stripes we experience can be the fuel for living more intentionally.

In his book The Beauty of What Remains he exhorts readers to do that via a simple message: to recognize how fleeting and finite time really is, and to allow that realization to prompt us to make the most of our blessed lives with the people we love.

He has a surprising way of inspiring that in others. “I often tell people that a great way to think about your life is to live as a good ancestor,” he says. “We don’t think of ourselves as ancestors when we are alive, but we are all going to be ancestors after we die.  A very instructive question to ask while alive is, ‘Am I living as a good ancestor for the generations yet to come?’  Most likely that will lead to a very meaningful life.”.

Loss is one of life’s most devastating crucibles. But it can not only be moved beyond, it can be an experience that leads to some of life’s most enriching gains.

Reflection:

Get the whole story…

Ready to create a life you love?

When you work hard at something over an extended period of time that you’re passionate about, one of your highest hopes is that what you’ve created will be appreciated by others and will be beneficial to them.

But it’s always a nice surprise to experience just how beneficial it is for you too.

That’s been the experience of the entire Beyond the Crucible team as we’ve readied our first-ever e-course, Discover Your Second-Act Significance, which is hosted by our founder, Warwick Fairfax, and cohosted by me.

The course leads you on a journey of self-discovery from feeling stuck to awakening your passion, helps you craft a vision rooted in your talents, and guides you into unleashing a more fulfilling life that leaves a legacy you’ll be proud of. Plus, it’s all presented in a way that allows you to go through it at your own pace.

While there are a lot of things we can tell you about the course – like it’s three one-hour long video modules, over a dozen downloadable worksheets, and insightful clips from our nine-part podcast series on Second-Act Significance that ran all of April and May – frankly, this blog is more than an advertisement.

Even as the guides of this course, Warwick and I learned a lot…

For me, the “a ha” moment was coming to understand the nature of the journey we were guiding people on. After we finished the Second-Act Significance podcast series, I wrote a blog that recounted some of the key learnings guests have shared from their experiences. You may remember the star of that blog – which you can read here – was a friend of mine in the late ’90s, Albie Pearson, baseball’s 1958 American League Rookie of the Year.

I won’t get into all the details of Albie’s story again, but the key point was that despite his success as a pro ballplayer, he faced a moment in which he was forced to ponder, “Is this all there is?” Was the life he was living his destiny, his calling? Was he following a vision he was off-the-charts passionate about and living on purpose, dedicated to serving others – what we call a life of significance?

We don’t mention Albie by name – strangely enough – in the e-course. But we do talk about that feeling of “Is this all there is?” that so many people experience when their first acts aren’t as fulfilling as they’d hoped.

And I realized, smack in the middle of recording the e-course, that the journey we were guiding people on when it comes to second-act significance is not so much “from setback to significance,” which Warwick and I have said hundreds (maybe even thousands) of times in describing the path from moving beyond a failure or setback.

I realized that the journey when you feel stuck – perhaps even successfully stuck – and unfulfilled is a little different. And out of my mouth popped the phrase “From ‘Is this all there is?’ to ‘This is all I want.’ That was a powerful moment for me. Moving from dissatisfaction to satisfaction. It’s different than moving from setback to significance, but definitely an emotional and circumstantial cousin.

Another eye-opening aspect of directing people through this course was the depth that gets added to the learning when you move beyond storytelling as a learning tool and add in the soul work of the worksheets we’ve included. Warwick found the one called “The Younger You” particularly moving and meaningful.

It asks questions about your earlier days like “What was most fun for me?” “What was decidedly not fun?” and “What inspired me when I believed that everything was possible?” That third one really resonated with Warwick, who said he had to think back to what he really wanted to be when he was young. He’d never thought about it at all.

He thought, as the fifth-generation heir to his family’s 150-year-old media dynasty, that he needed to be the next Fairfax to take the reins of that business. But the worksheet got him thinking deeply about the things that inspired him when he was younger. One of the first thoughts to leap to mind was his love of science fiction dating back to the late ’60s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. He was fascinated, captivated by the vision of the future it painted, with then-unthinkable technology like a talking computer and video conferencing – a commonplace reality today.

As an adult, he was drawn to Star Trek: Next Generation, perhaps because Capt. Jean Luc Picard was a philosophical thinker who reminded him of his dad. Those influences, and his love of history, a passion he inherited from his father, made Warwick realize he’d always been a bit of a dreamer, a reflective person. He connected the dots to realize that much of what he loves about leading Crucible Leadership – drawing stories out of podcast guests, encouraging vision, passion and vulnerability in our audience — could be traced to those “younger days.”

What we’re most excited about, though, is the journey this e-course can take you on. It really is designed to help make the learning actionable and more concrete. Yes, we always hope that our podcasts and blogs make an impact, but the e-course takes it to another level through concrete tools we haven’t offered before.

So, if that sounds like something you think may benefit you, or maybe even a friend or family member, please visit www.secondactsignificance.com to learn more. You can also listen to our recent podcast episode on which Warwick and I discuss the origins of the course and why it may be the first one we offer, but it certainly won’t be our last. You can listen here.

We look forward to guiding you on your journey to achieving second-act significance!

Reflection

Learn more about our new e-course…

This month we’re wrapping up our special BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE summer podcast series Lights, Camera, Crucibles: What Our Favorite Movie Heroes Can Teach Us About Overcoming Setbacks and Failure. It’s been a fun and insightful ride, packed with critical takeaways from some of my and Warwick’s favorite superhero, action hero and sports hero films that can help all of us – even those without secret identities – move beyond challenges and chart a course to lives of significance.

Here are five of the lessons we can apply to our own lives from the stories of these beloved characters:

  1. Develop perseverance

Captain America tells the story of Steve Rogers, a slight, sickly young man at the outset of World War II who wants desperately to fight for America because he can’t stand bullies – and he sees the Nazis as just that. After getting turned away several times at enlistment offices, he is selected for a top-secret super-soldier project by the doctor who developed the drug. Steve is chosen over more “qualified” candidates because the doctor sees in the Brooklyn kid kindness and humility and a never-say die attitude. Steve refuses, for instance, to take the military’s “no’s” for an answer. Often bullied, he tells his attackers, “I could do this all day” – and that’s exactly the kind of perseverance he will need after receiving the serum and becoming Captain America.

Perhaps even more than his chemically enhanced strength and agility, Steve’s spirit to keep meeting challenges head-on – in or out of costume – is what makes him a hero. As we encounter our own crucibles, adopting that mindset of “I could do this all day” as we move beyond them is a key element to achieving a life of significance.

  1. Find a team of fellow travelers

A key truth in Crucible Leadership is the importance of having a team of advisers who don’t just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. Early on in Iron Man, such people aren’t the ones Tony Stark surrounds himself with. The billionaire industrialist playboy only has time for admirers – until he is attacked overseas by a foe using missiles his company made.

He only recovers in captivity because another prisoner, a fellow scientist named Ho Yinsen, inserts a magnet in his chest to keep his heart from being pierced by shrapnel. But Yinsen doesn’t just save Tony’s life – he makes it worth saving. Yinsen’s admonishment that Tony stop wasting his life, and his sacrifice in laying down his own life to save Stark’s, inspires the businessman to make other people his business. He improves upon the suit of iron he builds to escape his captors — to defend the world from earthly and cosmic threats.

We similarly need a team of fellow travelers who will speak truth to us as we pursue lives of significance.

  1. Live life on purpose, dedicated to serving others

Peter Parker is a brainy high school kid picked on and labeled as nerdy by classmates. But when he’s bitten by a radioactive spider during a field trip, he develops the proportional powers of an arachnid. The new abilities come with new crucibles for Peter, though. His me-first attitude, focused on trying to earn money with his strength to buy a car to impress the girl he secretly loves, leads to his beloved Uncle Ben, who raised him like a son after Peter’s parents died, to be murdered.

Peter learns the lessons of that crucible, and of his uncle’s last words to him – “With great power comes great responsibility” – to become Spider-Man and protect New York from those who would prey on the city and its inhabitants. Spider-Man’s commitment to putting others ahead of himself makes it impossible for him to be with Mary Jane, the girl he loves, reasoning his enemies will always try to attack those close to him. But he continues to live a life of significance spurred on by Uncle Ben’s exhortation.

Using our gifts and talents in a responsible way that is others-focused, not self-focused, is what a life of significance looks like.

  1. Don’t lose sight of your mission … or the values that undergird it

In The Natural, Roy Hobbs is an otherworldly talented baseball player whose aspirations to be “the best who ever played the game” are sidetracked when he is shot as a teenager by a woman he didn’t recognize as a threat. He beats the odds, though, and finds his way to the majors many years later to become his era’s top player, even as an unscrupulous owner and a wily gambler try to keep him down.

His blind spot for alluring women almost is his undoing again when he falls for a moll in the gambler’s employ who distracts him from his vision to be baseball’s greatest star. He goes into a terrible slump that almost costs his team a playoff berth – but is pulled back from the precipice by the love of a truly good woman, the high school sweetheart that reenters his life.

The relationship redeems Roy by setting him back on the course he carved out that aligned with his passions and talents. The same discipline in keeping our eyes on our goals is critical for us, especially in the wake of crucibles.

  1. Keep your sense of humor 

We’ve all heard the phrase “laughter is the best medicine”; this is true even/especially when the sickness we’re fighting is moving beyond a crucible. In Die Hard, cop John McClane finds himself doing solo battle with a group of terrorists that seize the office building where his wife, Holly, works. Even as life-threatening crucibles pile up, he does not take himself too seriously.

He finds the humor in his plight, as deadly serious as it is. Like the gag he pulls after killing the first henchman: Sending him a down in the elevator to where the terrorist leader, Hans, is holding their hostages, having plopped a Santa hat on the dead man’s head and written on his sweatshirt: “Now I have a machine gun. Ho-Ho-Ho.” Later, while crawling through the building’s air ducts to evade his pursuers, he flips on a Zippo lighter he took from one of the other terrorists he neutralized and quips as he tries to navigate his way forward, channeling Holly: “Come out to the coast. We’ll get together, have a few laughs.”

Lines and actions like these serve to cushion the blow of the crucibles McClane keeps suffering. He teaches us the most tragic circumstances can be met with an attitude of hopeful optimism. We don’t laugh because what we’re going through is funny, but because it helps stabilize our spirits to meet the challenges – emotional and otherwise – we’ll encounter on our path to significance.

Learn the lessons of these movie heroes and you’ll be ready for your close-up – even in the midst of a crucible.

Reflection

Get The Whole Story

Order Crucible Leadership here

We are in the middle of a special summer podcast series at BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE we’re calling Lights, Cameras, Crucibles: What Our Favorite Movie Heroes Can Teach Us About Overcoming Setbacks and Failure. It’s been fun for me, both as cohost of the show and as a movie and hero fan since childhood, to dive into these insightful and practical discussions with Warwick for what will wind up being eight weeks in duration.

It occurs to me, though, that some friends of Crucible Leadership might be wondering why we’d spend so much time – two months – talking about fictional characters and the therefore fictional crucibles they’ve faced. With so many real-life men and women who’ve had all-too-real traumas and tragedies, isn’t it more important to focus on their stories?

Of course, there is great inspiration that comes from hearing the journeys of those who are navigating beyond their crucibles to live lives of significance. Those are the individuals, after all, whose stories we usually bring to listeners of the podcast. But as an article a few years ago in Psychology Today pointed out, there are surprising ways fictional heroes improve our lives. And in addition to unpacking the lessons these characters can teach us about moving beyond setbacks and failures, we also wanted to offer the truths discussed in that article.

So, as you continue diving into Lights, Camera, Crucibles, keep these points in mind from Psychology Today.

  1. Heroes produce an emotion called “elevation”

As the article by Scott T. Allison from April 6, 2014, notes, research suggests heroes and heroic action may evoke a unique emotional response that scientists have labeled “elevation.” The term and the concept undergirding it come from Thomas Jefferson, who used the phrase “moral elevation” to describe the euphoric feeling we get when reading great literature.

When we experience elevation, Allison wrote, we feel a mix of awe, reverence and admiration elicited by a morally beautiful act. Think about it: When Spider-Man rescues Mary Jane and defeats the Green Goblin, or Batman saves Gotham City from the Joker’s latest scheme to terrorize innocent civilians, or John McClane defeats the terrorists who’ve laid siege to Nakatomi Plaza on Christmas Eve in Die Hard, don’t you experience the climactic moment(s) with a sense of elevation, satisfaction and euphoria that the white hats have triumphed over the black hats?

  1. Heroes heal our psychic wounds

In ancient cultures, tribe members huddled around a communal fire at the end of each day, gathering together for warmth, yes, but also for protection. These acts of coming together also included another key activity—storytelling. And these initial stories were quite likely tales of heroes and heroic action, related in part to add to the sense of protection. Those listening felt safer knowing that forces of good were out there preserving their safety. That’s why so many modern hero stories exist in multiple iterations. Robin Hood has been a film staple since the silent-movie era because we are comforted when we imagine there’s someone dedicated to battling the forces of oppression to make life more livable, more enjoyable, more safe, for the marginalized and maligned.

  1. Heroes nourish our connections with other people

Storytelling is a community-building activity, Allison writes. The sense of connectivity it builds is critical to human emotional well-being. Hero stories create a strong sense of social identity, especially if the hero is a winning one – not just in outcome but in character and personality. The best, most resonant heroes reflect and reinforce the community’s most cherished values. Captain America’s character, Coach Norman Dale’s humble redemption in Hoosiers and Spider-Man’s sacrificial love for those closest to him give us something to aim for in our relationships.

  1. Heroes show us how to transform our lives, turning us into heroes ourselves.

Comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell said in 1988 that all of us undergo a hero-like journey throughout our lives. It’s only by having the courage and faith to risk change and growth in our own lives that we reach our own potential. It is nearly impossible to watch any of the movies we are discussing in our series and not feel the pull to a similar brand of heroism – not saving the world though superpowers, maybe, but dedicating our lives and gifts to serving others in ways similar to how a superhero, or action hero, or sports hero lives a life on purpose dedicated to serving others.

Psychologist Eric Erikson’s stages of human development, as discussed by Allison, posits that adults grow in significant ways as they gain age and experience, then in mid-life reach a stage of generativity, which Erikson defines as pouring something meaningful back into the society that has given them so much.

That sounds like living a life of significance, doesn’t it?

Reflection

Get The Whole Story

Order Crucible Leadership here