A key to living a life of significance is having a compelling vision you can devote your life to. And one of the most critical factors in seeing that vision come to reality is the level of passion you have for it. A vision without passion is like a car without an engine. It may look like a sleek Ferrari, but without an engine, it is going nowhere. An abiding passion for your vision is critical for its success.
Esther Fleece Allen overcame a traumatic childhood of abuse and abandonment to forge a successful career as a speaker and writer. But when the father she feared resurfaced to stalk her in her early 30s, she realized the successful life she had built was fashioned as a defense mechanism to avoid processing her pain.
The key to leading a life of significance, a life that helps others, and moving beyond a searing experience, a crucible moment, where you are forever changed, is to understand your design. We are all designed a certain way. If we look at those around us, our children, siblings, and our loved ones, we all come out of the box with our own wiring. We may be creative and artistic or love math and the sciences, or we may be adventurous and athletic. We all have certain aptitudes. If we are wise, we will understand our innate strengths and giftings, and build upon them.
Forty-nine percent of U.S. business professionals say they’ve suffered “an experience so traumatic it fundamentally changed their lives.” Crucible Leadership founder and Beyond the Crucible host Warwick Fairfax explores the many forms these searing experiences can take and offers healing insights for not just surviving them, but thriving in the aftermath of them.
Most leaders don’t talk about their failures. But Crucible Leadership founder and Beyond the Crucible host Warwick Fairfax has discovered learning, and sharing, the lessons of how he lost the family media dynasty can help others move past life’s most shattering setbacks.
You may have been through a crucible experience, a gut-wrenching, even humiliating experience. It may be a business or professional failure, or it may be a health or family challenge. Whatever it is, the course of your life has forever been changed. You have faced the fork in the road: whether to wallow in the pain of your crucible experience or to try to move beyond it. You have chosen to move ahead.
A crucible is a cauldron where metals are thrown together and heated to very high temperatures. The metals combine to form an alloy, something that is different than it was before. A crucible experience is one that is life-altering. Who you are after your crucible experience is different than you were before. You are never the same.
‘Beyond the Crucible’ host Warwick Fairfax shares the lessons he learned from losing a $2.25 billion bid to take over the 150-year-old family media dynasty he had be groomed to run since birth. From that “crucible moment,” he discovered a new vision for his life, one rooted in helping others overcome painful setbacks in their lives. Sharing the stories of men and women who have bounced back from devastating hardship and failure to live a life of significance is a key focus of ‘Beyond the Crucible.” Other episodes will explore key facets of the Crucible Leadership model, including understanding how you’re wired, crafting a vision out of your gifts and passions and how to bring that vision to reality.
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One of the most cautionary tales in recent corporate history is how Netflix embraced change and Blockbuster didn’t. As of 2018, Netflix, barely 20 years old, had a stock market value of nearly $165B, with 130 million subscribers in 200 countries. Blockbuster was out of business by then, having filed for bankruptcy in 2010 after incurring more than $1B in losses the previous year.
Change is not easy, which is a major challenge for us because we live in a world that is forever changing. Technology is changing. The market is changing. The culture is changing. Not only is everything around us changing, but it seems that change is happening at an ever-increasing rate.
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