Beyond the Crucible

Latest Episodes:

Embracing Her Tragic Paralysis as a Gift: Janine Shepherd #168 Jun 20, 2023

Show notes

Janine Shepherd was on track to represent her home nation of Australia in the Olympics as a cross-country skier – but then her dream, quite literally, crashed when she was hit by a utility truck while on a bicycle training exercise with her teammates. She came out the other side of that horrific accident and the 6 months of arduous recovery that followed to discover she was a paraplegic.

But as she explains to Warwick, her identity as “Janine the Machine,” the elite athlete, was not to be her destiny. She had another calling, learning to fly and training others to be pilots, and inspiring multitudes who have suffered tragedies and trials to embrace loss as their lives’ greatest teacher.

An in-demand speaker whose Ted talk was been viewed more than 2 million times, Shepherd calls herself “a mirror to help people see their own defiant spirits."

Her guiding philosophy? “Nothing comes easy, and if it did, it wouldn’t be worth having.”

To learn more about Janine Shepherd, visit www.janineshepherd.com

To explore Beyond the Crucible assets, including our free Life of Significance assessment, visit www.beyondthecrucible.com

Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

How She Found Herself After Escaping a Narcissistic Marriage: Victoria McCooey #167 Jun 13, 2023

Show notes

A violent altercation in which her enraged husband choked her was the last straw for Victoria McCooey. It left her 6-year-old son, who was in the room at the time, thinking she had been killed. But it also started her down a path of self-discovery and self-care. On this week’s episode, McCooey tells Warwick in detail the toll that being married to a narcissist had on her identity … as his controlling ways left her feeling unworthy and ashamed. But she also describes how she fought her way back to not only find her value, but to help other abused women find theirs – first through the same nonprofit that aided her and now as a narcissist divorce coach. She teaches her clients the Reclaim Your Power System she created initially for herself … to help them find the same freedom she’s living today. To learn more about Victoria McCooey, visit www.victoriamccooey.com To explore Beyond the Crucible assets, including our free Life of Significance assessment, visit www.beyondthecrucible.com Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

Surviving the 'Gift' of Cancer: Dr. Erica Harris #166 Jun 06, 2023

Show notes

Dr. Erica Harris endured a cavalcade of crucibles – starting with being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and given just two months to live after her body did not respond to chemotherapy treatments. But then, miraculously she believes, she went into remission in time to receive a bone-marrow transplant that put her on the road to recovery … only to find herself in the direst of straits again when her new immune system rejected her lungs and her life was hanging by a thread of hope. In this week’s episode, Harris explains every harrowing detail of her years-long up-and-down medical crises – finally set on a more stable path when she received a double lung transplant. Along that journey, she explains, she learned the important difference between toxic positivity and genuine positivity and discovered that the key to her recovery was a mindset shift. “I have lived a million more lifetimes than I could have if I never had cancer,” she says today – and now shares the lessons her journey has taught her as a speaker and coach who encourages others through her true wellness platform, Rise Today.

To learn more about Dr. Erica Harris, visit www.risetoday.com

To explore Beyond the Crucible assets, including our free Life of Significance assessment, visit www.beyondthecrucible.com Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

The 3 Important Truths Any Crucible Will Teach You #165 May 23, 2023

Show notes

Using our worst days to help others have their best days. That’s the undergirding philosophy, the bedrock exhortation, of BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE. And we explore it on this week’s episode in detail so that you can apply the lessons we've learned to turn your own trials into triumphs.

Warwick and I take a tour of those learnings, ground also covered in the new blog at BeyondTheCucible.com, 3 Critical Lessons All 5 Crucible Types Can Teach Us. We’ve discovered and keep discovering with each new guest we interview that while crucible experiences vary greatly in their circumstances, they come with many similar emotions, whether it’s a business crucible or a physical crucible, an emotional crucible or a Life crucible – or even the quiet crucible marked by feeling stuck and wondering “Is This All There is?”

And those three important truths that help you navigate your way up from and out of the pit? Realizing that mindset is everything; not going it alone; and taking the first right step, then the next right step.

Putting those truths together is the key to being able to consider your crucible not as something that happened to you, but as something that happened for you.

To explore Beyond the Crucible assets, including our free Life of Significance assessment, visit www.beyondthecrucible.com

Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

Preventing Money from Becoming Your Identity: Kristin Keffeler #164 May 16, 2023

Show notes

Helping people develop a right relationship with money, particularly the younger generations in families of wealth and influence, is the unique focus of the work done by this week’s guest, Kristin Keffeler. As a leading practitioner of family wealth advising called Wealth 360, she supports families of significant means in doing what she calls the “inner work” of money. It’s not just about managing portfolios, but developing a healthy life identity around the dollar signs. This may be the most personal episode we’ve yet done from Warwick’s perspective, given his history as the 5th generation heir to a multibillion-dollar media dynasty in his home nation of Australia. The ground he and Keffeler cover here not only offers insights and action steps for families like the one Warwick was born into, but to any family that can benefit from shoring up its relationship to money and their relationships to each other. At the root of finding that health, Keffeler explains, is understanding that the formation of personal identity separate from the numbers on a balance sheet is an important destination all of us must find our way to. To learn more about Kristin Keffeler and her work, visit www.illumination360.com To explore Beyond the Crucible assets, including our free Life of Significance assessment, visit www.beyondthecrucible.com Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

Unshackling the Shame of Her Parents' Overdose Deaths: Lauren Sisler #163 May 09, 2023

Show notes

Lauren Sisler was a freshman at Rutgers University when learned she had lost her father just hours after she had lost her mother. Having come home to grieve one parent, she was blindsided by the news that the other had died, too. And she had no idea how any of it had happened This week, we speak with Sisler about that 2003 tragedy, when she was not only hit with the unfathomable news of the deaths of her mom and dad, but the shame she couldn’t shake after she learned how they died: from prescription-drug overdoses. It would take her years to break free from what she calls the shackles of that shame, keeping the truth to herself even as she launched a successful career as a sideline reporter for college football and gymnastics on ESPN and the SEC Network. But as she began to share the true story of her parents’ deaths, she discovered she could transfer the hope and healing she experienced in facing those hard truths to the audiences that heard her speaking them. To learn more about Lauren Sisler, visit www.laurensisler.com To explore Beyond the Crucible assets, including our free Life of Significance assessment, visit www.beyondthecrucible.com Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

4 Truths To Help You Get Beyond Your Crucible #162 May 02, 2023

Show notes

A new day. The sun will come up. Hope. Things will get better. These are beliefs and emotions we all long to experience when we’ve been through a crucible. It’s not easy to get there, but in this episode we aim to help you move in that direction. Warwick discusses in detail his new blog at BeyondTheCrucible.com about the four things he wishes he'd known when he went through his darkest time … to help you get through yours.

You’ll learn that it’s OK to give yourself permission to grieve, that feeling broken doesn’t mean you’re worthless, that you're not defined by your worst day and that a small step can be a defining moment in your life of significance.

The upshot of it all: The bottom of the pit, where so many of us find ourselves after setback and failure find us, does not have to be our permanent address.

To explore Beyond the Crucible assets, including our free Life of Significance assessment, visit www.beyondthecrucible.com

Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

Recovered with Purpose: Adam Vibe Gunton #161 Apr 25, 2023

Show notes

Adam Vibe Gunton shares in harrowing detail how his life went from him being a “golden boy,” the star of every sports team he played on, to a tragic descent into darkness and dependence on heroin and prescription painkillers – set into motion by being introduced to cocaine at 12 and worsened when he blamed himself for a friend’s suicide. He wanted to die … until the rekindling of his faith in a miraculous way set him first on the road to sobriety … and then to significance. He founded Recovered on Purpose, a nonprofit that helps men and women in recovery tell their stories in ways that help others find sobriety, too. Just five years clean, he’s helped more than 1,000 people overcome their addictions … and has big plans for even more wide-ranging impact. To learn more about Adam Vibe Gunton and Recovered On Purpose, visit www.recoveredonpurpose.org To explore Beyond the Crucible assets, including our free Life of Significance assessment, visit www.beyondthecrucible.com Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

Reckless Faith in Action: Beth Guckenberger #160 Apr 18, 2023

Show notes

Our guest this week, Beth Guckenberger, explains how the death of her father when she was certain he would pull through knocked her off balance, making her question the faith in which her life was rooted. But when she realized God’s ways were not her ways, that they were grander and more mysterious than she had ever imagined, that knowledge was fuel for her journey to care for the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of orphans through Back2Back Ministries, which she and her husband started by writing a personal check and which now has 400 employees rescuing the most vulnerable all across the globe. “If you know what you’re going to be doing 50 Sundays from now, your faith is not reckless enough,” she says, bold inspiration to all of us pursuing lives of significance. To learn more about Guckenberger's Back 2 Back Ministries, visit www.back2backministries.org. To explore Beyond the Crucible assets, including our free Life of Significance assessment, visit www.beyondthecrucible.com Have a question? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

Trials Happened For Her, Not To Her: Andrea Heuston #159 Apr 11, 2023

Show notes

Your crucible didn't happen to you, it happened for you. You’ll hear us say that a lot – tied to that trial, set within that setback, affixed to that failure … you’ll discover seeds you can plant along your journey to a life of significance. You just have to look for and learn from them. Our guest this week, Andrea Heuston, has accumulated plenty of those seeds as she’s moved beyond her crucibles. From an emotionally wrenching infertility struggle, to a medical emergency that left her in a coma for weeks, to a fire that destroyed the home she called her “happy place” – she has faced a lifetime’s worth of tragedies. And yet she’s moved on to live a life of triumph – choosing hope and grace as she helps others to do exactly what she’s done. “I had to get over myself in order to go anywhere else,” she tells us … and the wisdom she’s accumulated can guide you along your own unique path to the life you’ve always dreamed of. To learn more about Andrea Heuston, visit www.andreaheuston. To explore Beyond the Crucible assets, including our free Life of Significance assessment, visit www.beyondthecrucible.com Have a question? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected