Beyond the Crucible

Leaning Into Her Own Homelessness to Help Other Women Escape Theirs: Leanna Fairfax Leanna Fairfax, a distant relative of Warwick's, talks about her rough early years – homeless at 15 and off-and-off again through the years after that, in an abusive relationship, plagued by the gnawing feeling that she would always live her life on the margins. But that’s just the start of Leanna Fairfax’s journey. Leanna traced her ancestry to John Fairfax, Warwick's great-great grandfather, the founder of the family media empire Warwick lost in a failed takeover bid that led to his life's greatest crucible. She tracked Warwick down on LinkedIn – discovering that the details of his crucible and John Fairfax's life of perseverance helped her make sense of how she was able to persevere through her setbacks and trials. What has her perseverance looked like? Going to college after dropping out of high school, earning top marks while getting her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and now pursuing her PhD studying women going through the same crucibles she did. Her focus is on researching homeless women living in temporary accommodations, which will not only help improve their lives but has also helped her learn things she didn’t know or feel when she herself was homeless. 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 be sure to tell your friends and family about us. Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at [email protected]

His Dreams of Being a Doctor Dashed,  He Found a New Calling Running a Physiotherapy Business: Jason T. Smith Jason T Smith thought he'd missed out on his calling to be a medical missionary, until he realized he'd been gifted a new one. Smith's vision for being a doctor helping heal those in underserved nations came crashing down when he didn't qualify to study medicine. So instead, he pursued physiotherapy, first as a backup plan, but then with a passion for not only restoring health, but for reimagining the field. He became founder and CEO of Australia's largest physiotherapy network, the Back in Motion Health Group. He never wanted a business, he says, yet ended up as a franchisor, with more than 140 of them supported by a team of more than 700 employees. But that isn't the final chapter of his life of significance. He sold the businesses for $100 million to focus full time on pursuits like his Iceberg Leadership Institute, where he's mentored more than 1000, others just like him. 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 be sure to tell your friends and family about us. Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at [email protected]

From a Tin Shed to the United Nations: Stephanie Woollard Not a handout but a hand up. That’s what our guest this week, Stephanie Woollard, just described about how she responded when did when, during a visit to Nepal, she encountered seven women living in a tiny tin shed. They were suffering from physical handicaps and from being marginalized by their society because of those challenges. And her efforts empowered them to change their own lives and to help others do the same. Through the charity she founded, which she named 7 Women, Woollard has bettered the lives of thousands of women in Nepal.  While equipping them with the power overcome their crucibles, she leaned into her strength and discovered the faith to help her overcome her own setbacks and challenges along the way – which included debilitating burnout. “I’ve always had the desire to make a difference,” she tells Warwick. And she’s done that – as the title of her book says – from a tin shed to the United Nations. 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 be sure to tell your friends and family about us. Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at [email protected]

Stories from the Book Crucible Leadership: Abraham Lincoln on the Character to Build a Team of Rivals The best people possible. That’s who Abraham Lincoln drafted for his Cabinet during the most precipitous time in U.S. history. And most of them weren’t the biggest fans of the country’s 16th president. This week, in the latest episode of our series within the show, STORIES FROM THE BOOK CRUCIBLE LEADERSHIP, we examine how Lincoln managed to achieve such momentous results by assembling a team of rivals. Key to his success, Warwick explains, was Lincoln’s character and the humility that flowed from it, allowing him to surround himself with men who had what it took to help him win the civil war and end slavery … even if they didn’t much care for their boss when they started working for him. In the end though, because of his lack of ego and his ability to forgive slights both big and small, Lincoln’s team came to view him, as one of them said, “as the best and wisest man he had ever known.” 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 be sure to tell your friends and family about us. Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at [email protected]

Kind, compassionate words are life-giving to us when spoken by others after we’ve been through a crucible. And they’re also life-giving to us when we speak them to others .. a truth the main characters in the movie TOY STORY learn when their initial rivalry turns into an unlikely friendship. This week, in the 9th and final episode of our summer series CLASSIC FILMS, CLASSIC CRUCIBLE LESSONS, we discuss the dangers of comparing our life of significance to someone else’s … and unpack why great fellow travelers don’t have to necessarily be those with whom we have a lot in common. In the end, we discover, building each other and ourselves up rather than tearing each other and ourselves down is what allows us to say, to quote TOY STORY’S title song, "You've Got a Friend in Me." 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 be sure to tell your friends and family about us. Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at [email protected]

Compassion and empathy. Two traits that help elevate Rocky Balboa out of his hardscrabble life as a small-time boxer who will need both his fists of stone and his heart of gold to escape the crucibles that have dogged him most of his life. This week, in the eighth episode of our summer series CLASSIC FILMS, CLASSIC CRUCIBLE LESSONS, we take a look at 1976’s Oscar-winning ROCKY, both written by and starring Sylvester Stallone.  The movie is a simple yet monumental achievement that explores the power a mindset shift and the support of fellow travelers can have on turning a life of aimlessness into a life of significance. Rocky Balboa always dreamed but never really thought he’d get his shot to change the spiraling trajectory of his life … but then a chance to fight for boxing’s grandest title, and his romance with his best friend’s shy sister, gave him a vision he could believe in and the self-respect he’d never been able to muster. 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 be sure to tell your friends and family about us. Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at [email protected]

Courage. It’s indispensable to our pursuit of a life of significance in the wake, and especially in the midst, of a crucible. That’s one of the key truths we unpack in our discussion of THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, the latest movie from the American Film Institute’s Top 100 we discuss in our summer series CLASSIC FILMS, CLASSIC CRUCUBLE LESSONS. The first movie in director Peter Jackson’s trilogy of films based on JRR Tolkien’s epic novel has at its center the most unlikely of heroes: Frodo Baggins, a Hobbit – a race of beings known for pursuing leisure more than adventure. But when dark forces threaten to overtake the fantasy world in which the movie is set, it’s Frodo who is entrusted to carry the powerful ring of the title, not the heroic men, elves and dwarves who become his trusted fellow travelers – not to mention the wizard who becomes his mentor and guide. And although he didn’t seek, doesn’t want and is in fact often terrified by the calling he’s inherited, Frodo finds the bravery and resolve to lead the charge to save civilization, discovering along the way that true heroes don’t need to expertly wield swords, just humbly wield character. 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 be sure to tell your friends and family about us. Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at [email protected]

Classic Films, Classic Crucible Lessons VI: To Kill a Mockingbird 

One person doing the right thing. That sums up succinctly TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, the movie we discuss this week on the sixth episode of our summer series, CLASSIC FILMS, CLASSIC CRUCIBLE LESSONS.

The person who keeps doing the right thing in this movie the American Film Institute ranked at number 25 on its Top 100 list is Atticus Finch. He’s a kind, compassionate lawyer and honest, dedicated father who refuses to bend to the racial prejudices of his time and place – 1930s Alabama. In defending his client, a wrongly accused black man, he models for his children, Jem and Scout, what character that doesn’t see color looks like.

As one of his neighbors tells the children at the tragic conclusion of the trial, “Some men in this world are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us ... your father is one of them.”

That would have been an agonizing crucible for many men of the era, but for Atticus Finch it was a role he fulfilled with honor and humility that can teach us a lot about weathering our own crucible experiences.

To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com 

Helping other people and having a higher purpose. That's a spot-on definition of what a life of significance is all about ... and also what IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE -- the movie we discuss on this week’s episode of our summer series -- is all about.

The movie’s become an iconic Christmas tale because, as we discuss here, it shows that when we live our lives guided by our character and values, rather than simply by the things we want, or at least think we want, we find the kind of joy and purpose self-interest can never give us.

That’s the lesson of George Bailey’s life … the kind of life that’s within our grasp when we place the needs of others ahead the desires of ourselves. 

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 be sure to tell your friends and family about us.

Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at [email protected]

This week, we focus our summer-series discussion on the Oscar-winning SCHINDLER'S LIST, No. 8 on the American Film Institute's Top 100 Movies. Specifically, we focus on Oskar Schindler’s journey from an amoral man focused on profiting from World War II and his fellow Nazis’ barbaric treatment of Jews … to a savior of those victimized people.

How does he end up there? His compassion and his character grow after witnessing atrocities that take his focus off making a fortune for himself to spending that fortune to buy the freedom – and the very lives – of endangered Jews.

He expresses his hopes early in the film that he people would say of his business acumen after the war started “He did something extraordinary” by amassing “all the riches in the world.”

That is indeed what is still said today about Oskar Schindler … but in a far different, far more significant way than he was capable of imagining when he said it.

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 be sure to tell your friends and family about us.

Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at [email protected]