Why Smart Leaders Keep Starting Over (And How to Stop)

From others over self, it's Hardcore and at Ease, a show about people who are keeping their edge without going over the edge. I'm host Shelley Rood. Today we tackle the most expensive mistake ambitious leaders make: wasting our precious years on the wrong path and having to rebuild everything from scratch. We explore what it means to understand your complete training system and what Augustine knew about systematic transformation. You'll discover the Hardcore and At Ease framework that helps you build it right the first time and the positioning exercise that you can use immediately. This is Hardcore and At Ease. Before you can fly an A-10 Warthog in combat, you need 200+ hours of training. The most expensive mistake ambitious leaders make is not hiring the wrong person or choosing the wrong strategy. It's wasting precious years building without the fundamental adhesive that makes everything stick. You lose minutes to tasks, but you lose years to paths. Wrong career, wrong relationships, wrong approach to excellence, and that forces you to rebuild everything from scratch. When I transitioned from military intelligence to serving as a chaplain, I witnessed firsthand the devastating statistics that most people never have to see. The statistics that drove me to develop this systematic approach weren't just military numbers. They revealed a universal human crisis. In 2022, 6,407 veterans died by suicide. And multiply those lives by 6.5, and you'll see the faces of the 41,000+ non-veteran adults that died by suicide in the same year. The civilian suicide rate was 14.2 per 100,000, and by 2024, US suicide rates reached record highs at 14.7 per 100,000, levels that have not been seen since 1941. These numbers represent people from every walk of life facing their own unique pressures. But the pattern is consistent. When we lack the foundational adhesive that holds our capabilities together under the stress of life, everyday life, even the strongest among us reach a breaking point. And if you've ever found yourself looking back and thinking, I wasted so much time, you're not alone. And more importantly, you're not stuck. Here's what's really happening. We're flying around without instruments, and we're just hoping that we're not going to crash. Most leadership advice that's out there, I've noticed it gives us really good tactics and lots of things to do and be busy with, but it doesn't give us foundational adhesive that holds things together. We get time management techniques, delegation frameworks, strategies of how to communicate better with our teammates, but there's this lack of a comprehensive training system that ensures that everything sticks together, not just for the first time, but for good, and is pliable in a way that we can use it amongst all these different strategies and missions and passions that we have in life. So in today's episode, we're doing a deep dive into the Hardcore and Addies framework for everyday excellence, because as you move along through your day, time is ticking. And like most ambitious people, there's a question that's taken up permanent residence in your conscious mind. Is it even possible to do this right the first time? I'm here to tell you that yes, it is, and it's not easy. Today's show is jam-packed with ancient yet relevant leadership wisdom, a dissection of the proven adhesive, and a map of what this proven path looks like. So if you're wanting to keep your edge without going over the edge, then we've got you covered. So let's dig in. Life is incredibly complicated. You and I are not the same, yet we play these comparison games, or in the military we call them butt-sniffing games. It's like keeping up with the Joneses. What do you have? I want that. We see a path that someone else has taken on and we want that for ourselves, so we go after it. We go after it hard, right? You and I. And then we just, we find ourselves failing in these ways that we never counted on. We get that promotion and now we've got so much extra work, we don't get the time off that came with it. We get married and we have kids, but we've lost ourselves in that, and so now we just want to be away from our spouse and our kids. We get this new promising project and we don't let go of the old ones, so we abandon our own efforts again and again and again. And the hidden cost of not having the right adhesive, the the first time is that while we can recover from bad decisions, it's really hard, if at all, to recover from the opportunity cost of building without a foundational adhesive. Here's a short story to illustrate what I mean. There was a time when my firstborn was king of the 8th grade. I am not exaggerating. He was taller than everyone else in his class. He was the fastest on whatever team you want to put him on. He had chiseled features of a man. You know, he was really owning that position in life. Top marks in both athletics and academics. His school produced daily video announcements, and at the end of the year, it was tradition for an 8th grade challenge. My son was chosen as the student participant, and so he got to choose a guest to compete against, and he chose Grandma. She's the nicest, sweetest woman who's always there for him, and she is just thrilled beyond belief that she was even asked to participate. She had no idea what she was getting into. This poor woman, with the cameras rolling and the entire 8th grade class filling up the room, these two competitors stood side by side and they received their challenge. You have 1 minute to create the tallest sculpture possible using only these marshmallows. 3, 2, 1, go! The 14-year-old and the 73-year-old, they grab these handfuls of marshmallows, they're scrambling on the table. Both of them set out seemingly following this idea of this shape of a pyramid, right? It's got a really strong foundation and they're working on these levels, but as the levels are going higher and higher— it seems like a good plan, but without that uniformity against the building layers, you know, every marshmallow is shaped just a little bit differently— these layers were failing. Marshmallows are tumbling all over the place. And at first there was just a few young women that were cheering for Grandma, but as seconds went by her cheering section was getting louder because Grandma saw that the plan was not working. And so her grandson is continuing to stack these marshmallows one on top of the other, and she tried a different technique. She grabs a handful of marshmallows and then smashes them together, releasing this stickiness of that inner layer. And then she just squished it and smashed it down onto the table. She did this again and again and again.. And while the results certainly were not pretty, they met the goal. Her sculpture was this sticky, gooey mess, and it was going higher and higher, and her cheering section was getting louder and louder. And then when the timer stopped, she was declared the winner. These two competitors had one opportunity to make it count, and while one remained steadfast in his approach to build, The other recognized the weakness of the build and shifted strategy. She sought out a sticking agent to make sure that the build lasted longer. Now let's apply this lesson to your life. You have a human spirit, you have a physical body, and each of these are marshmallows. You also have a purpose through work, and around you are resources and other people, and these are also marshmallows. So is your desire for excellence and your willingness to trust in the greater good. The question is, what's holding all your marshmallows together? What my son's grandmother understood that he didn't was this: without the right adhesive, even the most carefully stacked elements will tumble. The most driven people that I've worked with across every industry face this exact choice. They either discover the foundational adhesive that holds it all together or they spend years rebuilding the same marshmallow tower over and over again. And I used to be one of those people. The substance abuse data painted the same picture of systematic breakdown across all populations. In general, 10.2% had an alcohol use disorder, and 48.5 million Americans battled some form of substance use disorder. But here's what this really represents. When life has sharp edges, as it always does for ambitious people like you and I, we push limits and we cross boundaries and we look for something to take that edge off. Maybe it's a drink after a brutal day, or maybe it's something stronger when that pressure just doesn't let up. But here's the thing. If you're hardcore and you're turning to substances or vices to take the edge off, You're not at ease. You are the opposite of being at ease. Now let's be very clear. The Hardcore and Addies framework is designed to eliminate your need for substance use. This includes recreational alcohol, recreational marijuana, and recreational whatever that alter the mind and distract it from the mission. This positioning does not apply to substances used for legitimate medical necessity. Under proper medical supervision. And here's why this matters so deeply. The desire for substance use at any level is against the design of the hardcore and addies framework lifestyle. As ambitious people, we do not see the purpose of life as existing in solitude with a smile on our face. We feel deep, an internal calling to serve the greater good., and this cannot be done by being zoned out from reality in isolation. Our mission requires us to be fully present, fully engaged, and fully connected to the world that's around us and the people that we're called to serve. The underlying pattern was identical: people lacking foundational adhesive to handle life's inevitable pressures, trying to stack successes without using something to make it last. By the end of this episode, you'll have the complete training system that we're teaching daily to military personnel, corporate leaders, even technicians with big dreams. I love all of you, and this is the Hardcore and Addies framework. It's your foundational adhesive for building excellence that transfers across any industry, any opportunity, and any venture. More importantly, you'll understand what serves as the adhesive that holds all your capabilities together so they compound instead of collapse. This framework follows a simple 3-step process: shoot, move, communicate. Not original, I know. Extremely effective. Over the past few episodes, we've been building the foundational adhesive of the shoot phase. You establish your tactical center and you align your ambition. That's the adhesive work that makes everything else possible. Next, we're going to move into the move phase. You take resourceful action and generate momentum. That's where our individual excellence becomes team excellence. And then finally, you communicate, you expect excellence, and you start to trust the process. And that's how you maintain standards while building something sustainable. We've covered shoot fundamentals in episodes 3 through 8, and before we can transition into move, you need to see the complete map of where we're going. This isn't about finding one right path. It's about building with the foundational adhesive that makes any path you choose more effective. So let's talk about why this problem has existed since humans first tried to achieve great things. This isn't a new problem. Augustine of Hippo understood something that we've forgotten. Transformation requires systematic preparation, not just good intentions. When Augustine became the leader of Hippo in 395, he didn't just run an organization. He transformed an entire region's approach to governance, education, even community building. He produced over 110 written works that influenced Western philosophy, legal systems, and political thought for over 1,500 years. But here's what makes his story relevant to ambitious leaders. Augustine spent years wandering through different careers, different intellectual frameworks, different approaches to success. He knew firsthand the cost of building on the wrong foundation. As he wrote, late have I loved you. Beauty so ancient yet ever new. You were within and I was abroad, searching there for you. Augustine became one of history's most prolific writers and influential thinkers because he had foundational adhesive he could build with. He didn't waste time starting over with each new challenge. He had principles that transferred across any situation, any industry, any type of leadership role, and that's what I want for you. What I learned from my military intelligence background is that in high-pressure situations, to include everyday life, we need that same foundational adhesive. You can't afford to rebuild your foundation every time circumstances change. And here's why this ancient insight seems impossible today. We are rewarded for speed, not systematic preparation. If you move fast, you break things fast. You pivot quickly, sure, but what if you're moving fast in the wrong direction? And what if you're pivoting from one unsustainable approach to another? It's like watching a squirrel frantically gathering nuts, running into traffic with all of his efforts. All that energy, but no systematic approach to safety. Modern leaders think that they have to choose between moving quickly and building with foundational adhesive, and that's the false choice that keeps you rebuilding over and over again instead of building. We've got analytics for everything. We have endless productivity hacks, but no comprehensive framework for ensuring that your ambition serves something bigger than yourself. And here's the painful part: other people can see this pattern in us. When you run into someone that you haven't seen for a while, does this sound familiar? They sit there looking at us and they calmly judge and they ask, "So what do you got going on now?" There's a slight tone, there's a smirk. It's like they are judging you for not settling down, for not having your sights set on one thing. But you know you're not flaky, and you're out there hustling. You're genuinely trying to make greatness happen. The problem is not your ambition. The problem is you're building each new venture from scratch instead of building with foundational adhesive that transfers. The moment I realized that we needed something like this was watching incredibly smart, educated, capable people just lounging around, playing a game on their phone. It wasn't because they were lazy. These were high achievers. They had advanced degrees. They were impressive with their track records and their accomplishments and all of the tactical skills that you would want. I mean, people would pay so much to have the knowledge in the background that they have. These two people As I watched them, I could tell they were stuck. They were deeply unfulfilled. They're going through the motions of success while inside feeling empty. They had everything on paper, but they were living like they had nothing meaningful to contribute. And that gap between what they're capable of and how they're actually living, that gap right there is what's killing them slowly. Now, whether someone wears a uniform or a business suit, it doesn't matter because the challenge is the same. How do you maintain your edge without going over the edge? So we have marshmallows falling all over the place, we have squirrels running frantically around, and we've got geniuses who are busy playing games on their phones. Where is the true leadership? This is exactly what hardcore and at ease means in practice. You stay hardcore, committed to excellence, refusing to waste time on meaningless pursuits. But you also become at ease, confident that you're building with the right adhesive and operating from a proven path that creates lasting impact instead of just keeping busy. The marshmallows stop falling because you found the adhesive. The frantic energy gets channeled into purposeful action. And the brilliant minds stop wasting their potential because they finally have a framework worthy of their capabilities. Now, if you're someone who's curious about the deeper why behind this drive, ancient wisdom traditions have recognized that ambition and the desire to create positive change are not random personality traits. But whether you see it as evolutionary psychology, divine endowment, or maybe just good genetics. The practical reality is the same. You need foundational adhesive to channel that energy into a proven path. And that's exactly what Hardcore and At Ease gives you in the framework. So let's say that you want to do something incredible. You want to fly an A-10 Warthog into combat and you want to take out the bad guys. That's an awesome dream. That dream cannot and will not happen alone. Every action-packed movie like Mission: Impossible and Jason Bourne, they hinge on the understanding that while there are hardcore people out there with unique skills and drive, they never, never, never accomplish the mission alone. Now, whether you like it or not, you as an individual are born into a human body. And that human body exists in a time and in a place, and the forces of the universe are in action around you whether you choose to admit it or not. So to fly that jet, yes, you need those skills, and then you also need the jet. So if you can utilize your own resources to purchase that jet and build that runway, you don't just take off and start shooting and hoping the bad guys are in front of you. There are city, county, region, national, global restrictions on building and airspace, on theaters of governance, and these are in place restricting you before you even get started, before you even touch that ladder to climb up into the cockpit. You are Jason Bourne. You are Mulan. You are hardcore. You are that fiercely made individual with a drive and an ambition that you share with amazing counterparts parts of the human race that have gone before you. Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt— these are not fictional characters. These are spirits placed into human bodies who sought guidance and partnerships to achieve things they believed were meant to be achieved. You are no different. There's a reason you feel discontent. There's a reason for your everyday frustrations when you turn your head to your left and your right And you think this doesn't fit. Many of those symptoms and those governance restrictions are huge. And those laws, they're huge and they're fast and they're heavy and they're unfair and they're hard to move. But that is the beauty of the ambitious person. We insist, we persist, we resist. We don't fit into categories most of the time because we're the ones creating the categories. We can see the gaps that other people fail to see as they walk along like sheep within these systems. My challenge to you, ambitious person, is to stop wasting your time hating the systems and start figuring out what your target looks like. The Hardcore in Addies framework uses the TARGET acronym as your training progression. I want you to picture an actual shooting target, these concentric circles with the rings and the bullseye in the center. Your center is T. It's yellow. It's a tactical center. It's your operational core, and it's the foundational values and the authentic voice that guide every decision. This is your positioning. A, the next ring out, is ambition alignment. It's red. It's where your personal drive connects with your organizational opportunities, and this is is your aim. The third ring out is R, resourceful action. It's light blue, and it stands for maximizing what you have, where you are, with the available resources. Behind that is G for generate momentum. It's a dark blue ring where individual excellence becomes team excellence. And then there's E, for Expect Excellence. That's the black ring, and it's about setting standards that inspire rather than intimidate. We're already intimidating as ambitious people. So finally, you get to that last outer ring. It's white, and it's the last T, which stands for Trust the Process. Having faith in positive futures makes excellence sustainable. It's when you hit that bullseye, when you operate from your authentic center, every other ring is behind it. But when you miss the center, you end up working twice as hard on the outer rings, and you only ever make a fraction of the impact. So here's how this works in practice. Imagine that you're doing a competitive shoot and you have 3 bullets or 3 arrows. Each of those, if you hit the bullseye, the bullseye counts as 100 points. So the maximum that you can get is 300. Now, if you miss that bullseye even once, because every ring outside of the bullseye is less points, no matter how many times you try to shoot, you're only ever going to fall less than your 300 maximum points. Now, what does this look like in action off the training field? You can execute excellent initiatives like strategic team building events. Remember that fourth ring? And then you can implement these rigorous performance standards. That's the fifth ring. That's what we want you to do. These are good efforts, but these efforts will never yield maximum impact unless your foundational position is secure. So without this adhesive, you'll remain reactive to external circumstances rather than operating from authentic leadership. So without this adhesive, you'll remain reactive to external circumstances rather than operating from your authentic leadership authority. Just like pilots continuously cycle through simulators to solo flights and combat missions, always training, always refining, this framework operates as a continuous training cycle with 3 focus areas. The shoot phase establishes your position and aligns your aim. This is your foundational adhesive work. It's building your tactical center and aligning your ambition. We've been covering this in episodes 3 through today. Next is the move phase. When you take resourceful action and you generate momentum with it, your adhesive is now solid. This becomes natural, and transforming individual excellence becomes team excellence. And the third phase is communicate. We expect excellence and we start to trust the process. This is refined mastery of maintaining high standards while building something that's sustainable. The beauty of this system is that it's the same intensity but from a completely different adhesive. The hardcore part is what happens behind the scenes when nobody's watching. It's the daily training of your foundational adhesive so that you can operate with ease when the pressure hits, to include the pressure of everyday life. This isn't theory. Right now, intelligence officers are using this framework to make split-second decisions under pressure. Corporate executives are using it to build teams that actually want to work together. The data confirmed what I was seeing across all walks of life. Suicide was the 11th leading cause of overall death in the United States, affecting people across every demographic. Working-age suicide rates had increased 33% over 2 decades, with certain industries showing rates of 47.9 to 72 per 100,000. These weren't just occupational statistics. They represented a systematic failure to teach people how to build resilience from their authentic center. We're teaching this daily to military personnel, corporate leaders, even technicians with big dreams. The pattern is consistent. Leaders who have foundational adhesive still fall. We all do. But they don't fall nearly as hard. So that when setbacks happen, they recover faster because their core remains intact. What separates leaders who create exponential impact from those of us who just burn out? What separates leaders who create exponential impact from those of us who just burn out? They understand that excellence is trainable, but only when you have the right adhesive creating a proven path. If you're ready to be hardcore and at ease, then your training starts today. Your assignment: consume every episode of this podcast, 1 hour each week, to train your brain in the proven ways of excellence so you can make a dynamic impact on the world with peace in your heart. Here's what your immediate positioning exercise looks like. I'm going to give you 6 sentence starters. As you hear each one, complete the thought honestly in your mind. If you want to get an A++ on this assignment, you'll take some notes or hit the pause button after each one so that you can journal or meditate for a solid 2 minutes on each one. Here's the first: Tactical Center. When I need to make a tough decision, I— When I need to make a tough decision, I— Ambition alignment. Here is a list of organizations and groups of people through which I serve others in the world. Here is a list of organizations and groups of people through which I serve others in the world. Resourceful action. Instead of maximizing what I have right now, I find myself— Instead of maximizing what I have right now, I find myself— Generate momentum. When I see people around me work, they typically— When I see people around me work, they typically expect excellence. When I set high standards, people around me usually— When I set high standards, people around me usually— And finally, trust the process. When things aren't turning out as planned, my default response is to When things aren't turning out as planned, my default response is to— This isn't about perfectionism. It's about position. You need to know where you're shooting from if you want a better shot at that bullseye consistently. The key is progressive development. Don't try to master all 6 elements simultaneously. That's not how this framework works. This is a training cycle with specific practices for each focus area. In Phase 1, Shoot, it features the creation of personal mission statements and doing a values audit exercise, and those are covered in Episodes 3 through 5. You'll revisit your personal mission statement annually and perform a values audit at the 6-month mark, and this ensures that your foundational adhesive remains strong. In the second phase of MOVE!, we're including the Scope Creep exercise, which is designed to help you focus on essentials, plus a biannual resource inspection, as well as a move— as well as a momentum evaluation. These practices are included in Episodes 6 and 7. These tools help you maximize what you have while building collaborative excellence. And in Phase 3 of Communicate, it involves creation and maintenance of both projects and white space. These are advanced practices that we'll cover in upcoming episodes, and this is where you maintain standards of building something sustainable. What I've found working with ambitious leaders is that those of us who try to skip that hard work of creating that adhesive always end up rebuilding, but those who master the practices in the shoot phase find that everything else becomes exponentially easier. You'll cycle through these focus areas throughout your leadership journey, deepening your capability each time. Now, there are some common mistakes involved with this framework that I don't want you to make. So the biggest mistake that I see is that leaders jump straight to the outer rings. They try to build team momentum without clarifying their own adhesive. They attempt to set these really excellent standards without aligning their ambition. It's like trying to fly an A-10 without having basic flight training. Now, I want to tell you a story that perfectly illustrates this. Nancy Dakin is one of our former guests. She's a combat pilot and she had extensive experience in the cockpit of an A-10. Now she's fired the 30mm 7-barrel Gatling gun more than once, and Nancy shared with me that even though this gun is known as the Navy's goalkeeper close-in weapon system, from inside the jet it's not very loud. You can hear the rounds being expended, but there's really nothing drastically noticeable. Now later on, she was in a simulator, and when she fired the gun from the simulator, the seat started vibrating. She thought, what was that? She claimed, jumping as though a trick is being played on her. The simulator tech explained that the seat was vibrating because, you know, when you shoot a big gun like that, it's going to shake the aircraft. Her lived experience had proved him otherwise, and she advised them to absolutely remove that feature for a more accurate training experience. Throw some F-bombs in there, I'm sure. And this is exactly what happens when we focus on expecting excellence, like adding fancy simulator features, without first generating momentum for the idea, like gaining feedback from experienced people. The training designers skipped that foundational work of consulting actual pilots, and they went straight for what they thought would create excellence. Another pattern that I see is treating this framework like a checklist instead of a training progression. This is not about checking boxes. It's about building capability that compounds over time. The framework is designed to be progressive, and each element builds on the previous ones. You can't generate sustainable momentum without resourceful action. And you can't take truly resourceful action without being aligned in your ambitions. And you can't align your ambition without clear foundation. We are not talking about adding years to your life. We're adding life to your years. Every day that you operate without this foundational adhesive, it's a day that you're flying without instrument. So we've gone from wasting precious years on the wrong foundation to having a complete training system that's built for foundational excellence. And now you have the Hardcore and Add Ease framework. It's the same foundational adhesive that we are teaching to leaders across industries who refuse to waste time rebuilding. If you're tired of wasting precious time on these foundations that just aren't supporting what you're trying to achieve, please know that I'm here for that conversation. The best place to stay connected is through joining our free online community. We created this just for you. Go to join.othersoverself.com and you can engage with me. And better than that, you can engage with other leaders that are also figuring this out. What you'll get with me that you can't get anywhere else is someone who understands how to position yourself with the right foundational adhesive to hit that target. The first time and as you move, instead of creating these expensive rebuild cycles. With my background in military intelligence, broadcast marketing, and business coaching, I help ambitious leaders like you discover how the Hardcore in Addies framework creates lasting excellence without constant rebuilding. Now this week, I want you to sit on the framework that we've covered today And I want you to see where it takes you because we've covered the framework in depth. And what's really hitting me as I think about my own journey over the years is how much time I've wasted trying to build excellence without this foundational adhesive. Like my son in that marshmallow challenge, I just kept carefully stacking without understanding what would hold everything together. I got the bachelor's degree. I got the master's degree. I got the good job. I got the promotion, I got the skills, and at the end, it all came tumbling down. And I can't help but think how much faster or further ahead I would be if I had had something that stuck it all together. Now, what would happen if we approach our ambition differently from the start? How much further along would you be? For the next week, before making any decision, I want you to ask yourself, which element of the TARGET framework is this serving? I'm genuinely curious what you discover about your current positioning. I've been using this framework myself for years now, and honestly, I still catch myself trying to skip that foundation work and just go right to the good stuff, right? Like, let's just do that training exercise. But then I know that when I use the complete system, That clarity is undeniable, and that sense of peace is the proof. The thing that keeps coming back to me is this: when we think that systematic excellence is about being rigid, maybe it's actually about being free. Free from having to rebuild everything every few years. After a divorce and a major career shift back in 2014, I adopted a new mantra: this time with God. And for the past decade, my foundation has been the strongest of my entire life. More than that, the positive impact that's been happening as a result of my focused efforts is exponentially greater than I ever could have imagined. And I want that for you, and it's a life created by design. So allow me to share with you a few design elements that have helped me over the years. This closing segment is called Get the Gear because it features my favorite tools and resources for living hardcore and at ease. As I've mentioned before, I've been using the same planner system for 6 years now. This is the Action Day Planner, and it lets me see my entire week at once. My newest one just came in yesterday. It's blank, it smells amazing, and I can't wait to prep this for this upcoming fiscal year. The planner has been a game changer for me to be able to keep these framework elements balanced. Another piece of gear for you is that Augustine reference that I mentioned, his Confessions. It's incredibly practical for understanding systematic transformation. Links to both of these resources are in the show notes with my affiliate disclosure. And if this episode helped you see your ambition differently, then your challenge is to connect with us. Please keep the conversation going at join.othersofyourself.com. As we wrap up, here's your assignment for this week. I want you to sit with this strategic question: if you could only work on 3 things for the next 90 days, Knowing that mastering these 3 would make everything else exponentially easier, what would they be? Next week we're talking with Doug Slocum about Violent Positivity. That's his new book and how to maximize your current resources instead of constantly waiting for better circumstances. That's all for now. I'm Shelly Rood and you can count on me returning next Tuesday. Our conversation Inspiration is about doing extraordinary things with what you already have, where you are, right now. Until then, stay hardcore, be at ease, and trust the process.