The start of a new year leads many of us to create New Year’s Resolutions, but we’d be wiser, and happier, and help more people if we instead moved into 2020 crafting a vision rooted in our deepest values and passions.
Mike Charbonnet was proud when his son, David, followed in his footsteps to join the Navy SEALs. But when a parachuting accident left David paralyzed, Mike says his son summoned courage more remarkable than anything either of them ever had to muster in the military.
The Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life ends on an upbeat, inspirational note fitting for the season it celebrates. George Bailey, the reluctant head of the small building and loan founded by his father and uncle, is saved from ruin by the generosity of the citizens of Bedford Falls. They show up at his house on Christmas Eve to give generously from their modest means to help George make right an accidental and potentially catastrophic $8,000 shortfall.
True success in life, Crucible Leadership founder and Beyond the Crucible host Warwick Fairfax explains, is not about the number of zeroes on your bank statement. It’s about ensuring your life is aligned with your beliefs, values, and passions.
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.
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