What is the most important thing that I need to be doing right now? This single question will transform how you allocate your time, your energy. Your four types of capital.

This show is powered by Others Over Self®. Hit that subscribe button to keep training your brain.

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 am host Shelly Rood. We are living in the absolute best time in history. For Pirates, dreamers, and innovators who wanna move forward and take action today, we explore what it means to take resourceful action, and with the father of stoic philosophy understood about turning constraints into advantages, revealing why this approach is not only the key to professional breakthrough, but to personal happiness and fulfillment as well. This is Hardcore and At Ease.

Now that you've heard that powerful statement, let me give you a little bit more about who said it and in what context. That's Christopher Lochhead three time Silicon Valley, CMO, and author of, "Play It Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets," along with his Category Pirates team. We are living in the absolute best time in history for pirates, dreamers, and innovators to move forward and take action. Why? Because the landscape is filled with opportunities that established organizations with all their resources and capabilities. Often struggle to pursue due to their size and complexity. While large corporations navigate really lengthy approval processes and committee decisions, us nimble leaders using resourceful action can identify and solve problems with remarkable speed. Lochhead calls it category design, the ability to create entirely new solutions instead of competing in existing markets. And right now there's unprecedented opportunity to design new approaches while others are focused on perfecting the old ones. But here's what I keep observing, even in this incredible moment of amazing opportunity. Many very capable, high thinking leaders are getting trapped in scarcity thinking. I keep hearing it everywhere. Those ambiguous phrases, that signal scarcity mindset. They sound like this. Oh, you know, with everything going on in the world today, or how about this one, this time of year? It's just so busy. Maybe you're hearing, well, given the current climate. These phrases can be crap. These become default explanations that keep us stuck instead of moving us forward. Does any of that sound familiar? Ask yourself are, are you hearing this from the people around you, or is this actually coming outta your mouth? Because here's what breaks my heart about all of this. When we operate from scarcity, we're often miserable both professionally and personally. We can feel stagnant in our careers and really frustrated in our daily lives because scarcity thinking affects absolutely everything. But abundance thinking. Abundance thinking, this true, resourceful action. It doesn't just unlock professional potential. It's actually personal breakthrough. According to both ancient stoic philosophy and modern research on happiness, the foundation of personal fulfillment lies here as well. Listen, there's a lot that could have stagnated me in life. My previous marriage ended. I was not able to continue my military career the way that I had planned and facing these major life transitions. They felt like setbacks at the time, but I learned something that Marcus Aurelius knew. The universe is change. Every ending becomes fuel for new opportunities. When you stop fighting what is and start building from where you are. Just last week I was on a call with a mid-level manager at a tech company. He was really frustrated because his team couldn't afford to create training materials for a new software rollout. And I hear this all the time, especially with entrepreneurs. We feel upset that we don't have the capital that larger organizations have. So this tech entrepreneur is waiting to close a major deal so he can have that influx of revenue to help get these training materials going. And you know what? As we were talking, we were able to unfold that onion just a little bit deeper. We realized that he had access to assets that he could already start creating training videos with. He had a company editing software. He had a conference room that had recording equipment. He had three team members that even knew how to use this stuff, and they had produced content in their previous jobs. The capability was sitting right there in front of him. But he and his team weren't even able to see it. Because he as the leader, was so focused on what they needed to acquire before they could move forward, that he hadn't even thought about what was already within his control. And here's the thing, while he was waiting to capture that next form of revenue, you know that another startup somewhere else is probably trying to solve that exact same problem with nothing but a smartphone and free editing software. And they probably moved forward and did it. Many ambitious leaders are trapped thinking about external solutions when we really need to be thinking about our internal capabilities. Don't be so focused on future funding that you can't maximize what you have with your present resources. Don't be the ones who are waiting for permission when you really need to just be taking initiative. And this is what Lochhead means when he talks about pirates versus the King's Navy. So the Navy has all the resources in the world, but they're really slow to deploy them pirates, on the other hand, which is what he thinks you and I are, we work with what we have and we move fast. So now that we understand the opportunity and the trap, let's shift over to what exactly this teaches us about this problem, because it's not a new problem. 2000 years ago, a Roman philosopher who faced exile, political persecution, and eventually excommunication, he figured out something about constraints that most leaders today. Honestly, we still haven't learned. So let's talk about Lucius Anus Seneca, the father of Stoic philosophy and one of Rome's most influential thinkers. Seneca was born into wealth. He lost it all. He gained it back. He lost his political power. He was exiled, recalled, and ultimately he was forced to take his own life by Emperor Nero. But through all of this upheaval, he became one of history's most influential philosophers, and he became one of Rome's wealthiest men. Now, his secret wasn't in having unlimited resources. It was in seeing potential in whatever resources he had. Seneca understood something that even nowadays our modern leadership is missing. Constraints don't limit you. They focus you. Seneca taught that our suffering comes not from having too little, but what we don't have instead of maximizing what we do have. He wrote that every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. But here's what most people miss about stoic philosophy, and I promise I won't geek out on YouTube bad about this. Seneca wasn't advocating for us to lower our standards. He was advocating for us to raise our resourcefulness. The stoics believed that true freedom comes from focusing entirely on what you can control. And here's the beautiful connection between stoic philosophy and personal happiness. Seneca taught that contentment, true lasting happiness comes not from acquiring more, but from maximizing what you already have. Modern happiness research confirms this ancient wisdom. People who practice gratitude for existing resources report higher levels of life satisfaction than those who are currently focused on what they lack. This isn't just about professional success. Although that will follow, this is about each and every day having energy and purpose instead of anxiety and overwhelm. And when you shift from scarcity to abundance thinking, you stop feeling like life is happening to you and you start feeling like you're actively creating the life you want or the business you want for you and those around you. And I know this personally, when my military career took an unexpected turn. I could have stayed bitter about that path that have closed. And I do think about it often, but now I ask, what resources do I have now that I wouldn't have had if I had been on that path? That shift led me into leadership development work, which led us into building the mindset of others, of herself. Every supposed setback that somebody would judge in my life has only served as the foundation for the next breakthrough. Because I've been able to stop mourning and start building with what is. Now that we understand this ancient wisdom, let's connect it back to our modern leadership thinking, because this connects directly to what Greg McKeown is teaching in his book, essentialism. This book has radically shifted my thinking well over the past decade. It's now celebrating its 10th anniversary, and McKeown shows us that the path. To achieving more isn't actually doing more things. It's about doing less things extraordinarily well with the resources that we already possess. I've read Essentialism probably six times now, and every time I go through it, I discover something new about how to eliminate the non-essential so that I can focus on what truly matters. And it's never changing. It's not like you just do this once and you're done with it. It becomes a daily practice. So come along with me as we grow and scale our own leadership development training company, utilizing these exact principles, but more than business strategy. This approach has transformed my personal happiness. McKeown shows that people who live essentially, who say no to good opportunities so they can say yes to the great ones. We report significantly higher levels of life satisfaction, and they're not just more successful, they're more fulfilled. When you stop trying to do everything and start focusing on what matters most, you don't just achieve more professionally, you reclaim time for relationships, for rest, and for the things that actually bring joy back into your life. And as somebody that went a lot of years without joy, I know what that feels like, but here's what essentialism really looks like in practice. It's about having deep reverence for the matter at hand. Yesterday I had the honor of performing an invocation at a retirement ceremony for Chief Master Sergeant Modock on Selfridge Air International Guard Base. I had never met this woman before, but she specifically requested a female chaplain for her ceremony. Now I could have done what she had expected and what she told me, she thought that I would do just the standard boring God be with us, type of invocation. And that would've been enough. It would've been easier, it would've been faster, and by most people's standards, much more efficient. But the reverence of the day. 30 years of exemplary service, one of the highest enlisted ranks in the Air National Guard. A woman who set the standard for what leadership looks like that commanded so much more. So I spent the time crafting something worthy of the moment. And when we met at rehearsal, I had a few moments to go through the script with her and she was immediately brought to tears. She said, this is so meaningful. I had no idea that you would even think to come up with something so personal we've never even met. And after this ceremony, there was really positive feedback about sincere appreciation for having a thoughtful invocation that's essentialism. Not rushing through to check a box, but asking what does this moment deserve? It would've been a severe injustice on my part, and quite frankly, a mark of pure laziness to just default to the standard when the situation called for reverence and focus. One ceremony done with deep intention, created more impact than a hundred generic invocations ever could have. Our clients consistently tell us that essentialism and focus are the two things that make us unique in leadership development space. While other training companies are often wanting to add more, like more event appearances and more strategy meetings, more product lines, we are out here using our existing content as cornerstones and we're extracting value at deeper levels. So instead of creating 50 different workshops, we're perfecting five core frameworks and delivering them with such depth and such precision that they create lasting transformation. And that's what McCowen's framework is an action. It's exactly what we're going to teach you to do with your resource. So let's take a look right now at a real world example of how this played out. I want you to think about what happened in 2020. The pandemic forced us to focus on essentialism, and in the front of everyone's mind was this drama that played out about how the states and the governments had to decide what was essential and what wasn't. Do you remember that controversy? Everything from alcohol stores staying open, but barbershops being closed, liquor is deemed essential, but getting a haircut isn't big. Box stores are operating at full capacity while the little family, small businesses can't even open our doors. Cannabis dispensaries remaining open gyms are being shuttered. What did that do to our nation as a whole? What did it do to the thought process of us as a society? There's so much disagreement with this categorization, and rightfully so in so many cases. Here's what's fascinating from a leadership perspective. The organizations that thrived during this period, even if they weren't denoted as essential, they were the ones that were probably practicing essentialism in their own operations long before anyone else forced them to the restaurants that survived. They weren't necessarily the ones with the biggest bank account or the ones that took advantage of all these set asides of government funding and stipends. They were the ones that looked at their existing assets and got creative. They looked at their kitchen space, their chef skills, their customer relationships. They looked at what tech could provide them, and they thought, how can we serve people in a different way than what we're used to? With what we already have, and they pivoted to delivery. They created meal kits. They offered online cooking classes. They turned dining rooms into grocery markets. We saw this in our own Chinese takeout place around the corner to this day, when you walk in there, it's stacked floor to ceiling with takeout containers. You can still go in there and eat, but the PO point of the restaurant has shifted. They're more takeout now than ever before. And when I talk with a restaurant owner, they like it that way because they have more freedom. Now, this type of thinking is exactly what we did with others over self. During the pandemic, we didn't scramble to create new programs. We went deeper with our existing hardcore Addies framework. We extracted more value from content that we'd already developed. We refined our core message. We went back to the basics. We brought others over self, back to the front of our teachings. Instead of having it just put on a shirt and stuffed in the closet. For us, it really was all about focusing intensely on serving our existing community and that focus, that deliberate refusal to chase bids and opportunities and grants. Well, that's what allowed us to emerge even stronger, and you get to experience what's happening because of that. So in today's talk, we've already established this philosophical foundation of what we're doing. So now let's get real about how this actually works. I'm wearing light blue today. If you're one of our video viewers, because we're moving into the blue rings of the hardcore and Addie's framework, we've got that tactical center in the yellow. You've done that hard, heavy lifting of hitting that bullseye. You know who you are and what you wanna aim for, and now it's time to stop talking and start doing, and we're bridging the gap from knowing. To doing, and how do we do that? That's resourceful action. So we hit our tactical center in the bullseye of the yellow. We moved out into ambition, alignment in the red, and now we're moving into the first light blue ring because here's where most people get it wrong. They think that resourceful action means making do with less. Like you're some kinda startup martyr eating, ramen and working outta your garage. And while there's a whole bunch of cool pictures, you know, of big time entrepreneurs that have started that way, that's not necessarily what resourceful action means. It means that you're finally waking up to see that you have way more than you already realize. Way more capability, way more connections and opportunities that you're just not using. You are not paying attention to them. And so here's what really strikes me about this conversation. So many people are stuck fighting our current circumstances instead of really owning where we are and working from there. You can be so busy being really ticked off about what you don't have, or even regretting decisions that got you to the point of where you are. And if that's you, then it's really, really hard to look around. See what's available to you right now. I see this in leaders all the time. People who are bitter about not getting that promotion or they're entrepreneurs, but they're still really angry that this investor didn't think that they were worth it. I've heard it from executives that keep rephrasing those things that we heard at the top of the episode. Why their company failed. Oh, it's just the market. With everything going on right now, changes in policy. You know what? Disappointment sucks. It totally does, but your regret is not a resource. It's a prison, and it's a prison that you have the key to get out of. Whenever you're ready, let me tell you a story that might help clear things up for you about this. Back in my Intel days, we always had a phrase, perfect. Information is the enemy of good action. I remember working in operation where my team sat around for a really long time, longer than we should have, and we were waiting for better surveillance equipment to come in. We needed another squad that could come in and give us some off time, and there was a briefing that still hadn't happened and. There was so much angst amongst my team about not being able to provide the commander with a good brief because of what we didn't have. But our team leader, you could see on his face day after day that he didn't like what he was hearing from his own team, and he finally said, you know what? I don't wanna hear it anymore. I don't wanna hear why you can't give me an excellent product. Not today. I wanna know what is the best product that you are giving me today. We're not gonna focus on what we don't have. We've already captured this. It's written on the board that we're waiting for it, so stop dwelling on it and give me a phenomenal product today. That shifted our mindset. We did. We took inventory. We looked around at all the data points that we did have coming in, what was reliable, and that operation was executed with our limited resources, but it gave really, really good intelligence to the decision makers that helped shape important policies, that perfect setup that we as a team had really been hoping for. It probably would've been too late, and we were able to sway those decision making powers anyway. So the question here is, what about you? What is it that you're sitting on or waiting for, or what is it that you can't let go so that you can start to look around you and really enjoy and take stock at the incredible things that you have at your fingertips to be able to utilize? So before I dive into this resource framework, I really wanna tell you about my favorite general manager from back in my TV days. Alright, so this is Otis Pickett and he is just how he sounds, good old Otis. He's from Charleston, South Carolina, specifically the son of a notable doctor from Isle of Palms, and he's as southern as you can get. Sears sucker suits every day, loves his stories, loves his. Southern Foods. So Otis had this knack about him that he would talk about in our management meetings. He had a saying about peas and pork chops, and I use it even now. When I trained my leadership teams, he would say, every pork chop comes with peas. You pile more pork chops on your plate and you get more peas. And pretty soon those peas are falling all over the place. Now, he was talking about how every big initiative, every pork chop comes with a smaller bunch of supporting tasks. The peas, and if you're not careful, you'll be so busy managing peas that you can't actually get to the pork chop. And this applies to every resource decision that you make. The recording studio that I'm in, it's amazing. It's a pork shop. All the equipment maintenance, the technical support, the updates, the acoustic treatments, the insurance, utilities, those are the peas. Now, what about the facility that you wanna manage? Pork chop. Where's the peas? The security, the cleaning, the repairs, the parking management. There's peas everywhere. Let me give you another example that makes this absolutely insane as we apply it to our business world Trade Show vendor booths. We get those requests and it looks like a simple decision, right? You pay the fee, you show up. You might even be so honored that they even thought to invite you to have a vendor booth, and you go and you shake hands. Look around at all the PS that it takes to pull that off your booth design, your setup crew, your promotional material. What are you handing out? Branded tchotchkes that nobody actually wants anyway. You've got travel, you've got hotels. You're taking your best people away from revenue driving opportunities so that they can be there and shake a couple hands. What about the follow-up systems? Are you even going back and looking through the cards that you collected? There's peas everywhere, and you might be so busy handing out those little stress balls with your logo that you completely miss the point. Marketing is supposed to create sales conversations, and I dare you to think about how exhausted you are after your trade show experience and how you've basically spent thousands of dollars to be a glorified greeter. And that's what can happen. That's coordination, pretending to be collaboration. We coordinate all these moving pieces of our Ps, but we're not actually collaborating towards the goal, which is finding those qualified prospects and making those deals. So here's what we did with our Women Veteran Strong program. We support military women, and the group of mine that runs it, we're military women. So we get invited to a lot of vendor shows. We always are asked to put up a table at veteran events and represent the military women, right? We tend to be a very desired niche, but we started noticing that. Our program representatives were coming back, not only exhausted, but they didn't wanna participate anymore. They were actually being harassed at these events, and it didn't even matter what type of event. I'm talking professional business networking events, veteran resource events. It didn't matter the type of events. For some reason, being a women's veteran resource table made them a target for harassment. And as a program, this sat really heavy on my heart because I was literally contributing to the problem that we were trying to solve. How backwards is that? So we said, no. What do we actually want to accomplish with these vendor trade shows? And the answer was really simple. We wanna create safe spaces for military women. Who feel overwhelmed at these crowded and high pressure events. You wanna know why military women don't come to your events because they don't feel safe. They're getting harassed and we know this, so we're deciding to do something about it. Years ago, we stopped doing vendor tables entirely, and now when event organizers want us, we offer one thing, a care corner. It's a quiet, comfortable space with seating. There's no sales pressure, there's no promotional garbage. It's literally a comfortable place where people can breathe and reset. And have genuine, safe, facilitated conversation if they choose to. And the result is that our team loves going to events. Now the attendees are really interested in sitting down and chatting with us instead of walking around trying to shove as much crap as they can into a bag, we're actually fulfilling our mission instead of just promoting it. That's what resourceful action looks like when you stop defaulting to what everyone else is doing. And here's what happened to our team's personal wellbeing. They stopped dreading the events. They start looking forward to them. When you align your actions and your values and you eliminate the activities that find you so drained. Because they don't serve your mission at the core. Work can become energizing instead of exhausting, but it takes being brave and being different. There is personal happiness that most business advice misses entirely, and you have a right to notice it and do something about it. The key is to really understanding what you're taking on before you commit any major resource. Every single event that you're asked to attend is a pork chop. Recognize all those peas that come with it, and then ask if there's a more essential way for you to create an impact and actually achieve your goal. Now the category pirates. Talk about four types of capital that every entrepreneur needs. And even if you don't think of yourself as an entrepreneur, stick with me here because this isn't theoretical framework. This is how you actually take inventory on what you have. The first is financial capital. Now obviously this is your budget and your cash flow, but it's also the equipment you own. You know when you do your taxes and you list off all your assets, it's the subscriptions that you're paying for, it's spaces that you have access to, even time blocks where you're not interrupted. That's all financial capital. The second type is human capital. These are skills and experience. It's also your team's hidden capabilities. If you don't know what they did before they came to work for you, shame on you as a leader. We're talking about your network of former colleagues, the experts that might owe you favors. That's all part of your human capital. This brings me back to Chief Modock from yesterday's ceremony. She was celebrated at her retirement for her decision to always put people first. When leadership would get excited about new tasks and new initiatives coming down the pipe. She had this habit of saying, yeah, that's great, but where are the people required to pull it off? What about them? That's human capital thinking at its finest. She understood that every pork chop, every mission, every initiative ultimately succeeds or fails based on the people executing it. So while others were focused on the task itself, she was the voice focused on whether the human resources were truly available and sustainable. That's why she built systems that endured and developed people who excelled. She never forgot that people are your most critical resource and they deserve the same strategic consideration as your budget and your equipment category. Pirates also teaches social capital. This is your reputation. It's your ability to move a room. It's what connects you to decision makers and your credibility in specific areas. And the final type of capital is creative capital. It's your ideas, your unique perspective, your proprietary processes, the intellectual property that you've developed, every speech that you've ever given, your problem solving approach that's different from everyone else's. It takes guts to say, no, I won't set up a vendor table, but here's what I will do. And that's the thing about peas and pork chops. Every major decision affects all four types of capital. You've got a new hire, and yes, that costs money, but it also requires training, time management, energy, relationship building. You wanna expand your market. Awesome pork chop. Where's your research, your credibility, your building, your partnership development. Everything has peas. Now, let's go back and think about Laverne from episode eight because she's a perfect example of someone who got this right. The pandemic hits, her therapy practice is disrupted, and she could have waited for things to go back to normal, but that's absolutely not what she did. She looked at what resources were available around her and she took advantage of them. She realized, I have a home office, I have a laptop, I have good internet connection, and I have my skills. And from that, she was able to move forward. And that's abundance thinking. That's what we wanna celebrate. She's not thinking, I don't have enough to start a business in a pandemic. She's thinking, what can I do today with what I have today from Greg McKeown's framework? The question that you ask before any action. Is this the most important thing I could be doing with these resources right now? Not, is this a good idea? Not will this work eventually, but is this essential? Now, let me show you the difference in thinking. Scarcity thinking says, I don't have enough budget. My team isn't skilled enough. I need more authority. I'm not the decision maker. Abundance thinking asks, how can I prove this concept now? What skills are we underutilizing? Who could I partner with to multiply what we have? My military women's ability to sit down and have genuine conversation. That's a skill that wasn't being tapped into. It was being hidden in a vendor table. Now, he worked with this entrepreneur once, who spent eight months, eight months trying to raise 200 K for his new app. He said that he couldn't build anything without that funding, and so we did this resource audit, and it turns out that he had developer friends who were willing to work for equity. He had a designer who owed him a favor, and he even had some potential customers because his wife's professional network was their ideal customer. So he went ahead and was able to launch his minimum viable product for under 5K, and he had paying customers before he was even thinking about approaching another investor. That's the difference between scarcity and abundance thinking, and this is what separates good leaders from excellent ones. Excellent leaders prevent the fires instead of fighting them. They focus, they set aside time for what matters. We're thinking strategically while everyone else is running around being busy. I see the opposite constantly in the training development industry. Leadership, consultants like me, I'm always networking. I can never get a word in edgewise. I'm always developing new content. Always, always, always being busy, busy, busy. But when I look closely, I and I have candid conversation with them. I know that they're not actually making real progress. Just rearranging deck chairs and blaming market conditions when nothing substantial is happening and it's hard to watch. So I am inviting you to come along on the inside with me because we're gonna do something different. Other leadership development training companies are chasing speaking gigs and trying to be everything to everyone, but we're gonna go deeper with fewer things. We extract maximum value from our core content. We serve clients at levels that create real transformation, and that's resourceful action. We're not adding more stuff. We're going deeper with what we already have. The hardcore and Addie's framework for everyday excellence gives us everything that we need to know. But we can't just look at it and then look the other way. We have to teach it and teach it and live it out. And so now that we understand the philosophy and the framework, it's time to get practical. Here's your one action item from today's episode, and it's the foundation for every resourceful action that you're gonna take moving forward. It's the complete resource audit. Set Aside 30 minutes this week, get four pieces of paper. Four documents, however you wanna do it, and label them using the category pirates, four types of capital, financial, human, social, and creative. You're gonna spend about seven to eight minutes on every single category. You're gonna list out everything that you have access to, but here's the key for each major resource, like your pork chop, you also need to note the supporting resource. Or the PS that it requires. When we talk about financial capital, yes, we're saying budget and cash flow, but also the assets that you can leverage, the subscriptions that you already have access to because you're paying for them equipment that you own, spaces that you can tap into, and those time blocks that you can control. Human capital, I want you to dig into your skills, your experiences. It doesn't matter if you haven't used your photography skills in 10 years. They still apply your energy levels and also your team's capabilities. What about the people in your network, experts that you could interview, communities that you belong to, relationships that you can reactivate. You know what people are excited to reconnect after COVID. Your third piece of paper is social capital. Your reputation and your access to decision makers. That's social capital. It's your ability to convene people. It's your platform, it's your audience. It's your professional associations that you belong to. What about your industry connections? If you're a mover and a shaker like I know you are, write that all down. Capture it. And the fourth type of capital is creative capital. It's your ideas. It's your intellectual property. It's your unique perspective. It's how you problem solve your innovative thinking. If you happen to have any proprietary processes or systems, flush them out. Put them down. Now most leaders tell me that this audit exercise reveals that they have three to five times more resources than they initially thought. It's not because we're gaining new resources by doing this. It's because we're finally able to see what's already there. It's like when you clean out your attic, oh my gosh, where did all this crap come from? We have so much as incredible entrepreneurs. We just need to clean out our attic and take inventory and mark the value of what's there. So let's talk about Otis Pickett again, remember him, he's my general manager that gave us that wisdom of pork chops coming with peas. Whenever you're doing this audit, I want you to ask yourself, what peas come with this pork chop? And whenever you're creating or considering doing a major initiative, like a new event or a new partnership, think about what supporting resources is this gonna require and don't play it down. If you have a powerful capability, what smaller supporting elements are required in order for it to function effectively with excellence? That's the key. Now, this is the step that prevents you from overcommitting your plate and helps you actually see that full resource picture. I worked with a manager who felt completely stuck in her role a while ago, and she thought that she needed to have a promotion to make a bigger impact. So we did this audit together and she realized that she had relationships with the department heads in her organization, which is social capital. She realized that she had access to a company database that most people would never see. That's creative capital. And we realized that she had some incredible credibility because she was someone who was always on time and thoughtful with her presentations. That's human capital, and here's where the peas and pork chops thinking really helped her. She realized that proposing a cross departmental initiative. Would require ongoing coordination, regular reporting, stakeholder management, all of these little Ps, and she had all those capabilities also. So six months later, she was offered two different leadership roles, and the resources for impact were already there. She just needed to be able to see the pork chops and the peas clearly. Once you complete this audit, I promise that you'll start seeing opportunities for resourceful action everywhere. That initiative that you've been postponing, you might discover that you have everything you need to start it today. What about a project that feels overwhelming? You might realize that you have access to exactly the expertise that you need. After this initial audit, I want you to make it a practice to regularly use McCowen's essential question for every major decision.

What is the most important thing that I need to be doing right now? This single question will transform how you allocate your time, your energy. Your four types of capital.

Now you are gonna slip back into scarcity thinking we all do. And when you catch yourself saying, I don't have enough, I want you to pause and pull out that audit and ask, what do I have that I'm not fully using? A really, really good and personal example of this was after the birth of our third child. I was feeling very physically inhibited. It was a very difficult childbirth. Even walking came with a lot of hurt and I'll never forget. Uh, my father, bless his heart, recommending to me that I should ride a bike for exercise. Yes. He actually told a newborn mother, um, after childbirth that her best form of exercise was riding a bike. So I was just feeling really defeated in what I couldn't do, right? I couldn't ride a bike. I was having trouble with my tailbone. I couldn't even do squats. And I'll never forget voicing this negative mindset with my husband on a walk one day. And he said to me, Shelly, what can you do? And it was right there. All I needed was that focused voice of essentialism to ask me to shift my mindset from scarcity into abundance. And he was right. There were a lot of things that I could do, even with my physical inhibitions that I had at that time. Now, what we've covered today is the essential foundation for resourceful action. We've shifted from scarcity thinking, this mindset that really paralyzes over to abundance thinking, which is what activates us. We explored how these constraints can actually become advantages. And why these high achievers like you and I might actually miss the resources that are right in front of us. And your tool, the biggest tool in your bag right now is the resource audit because it reveals your hidden capabilities. And I'll be honest, I still catch myself slipping into scarcity mindset. Sometimes I think like, oh, I'm up for this big challenger. I've got this really tight deadline. Just last week, I was really frustrated about not having enough time to work on a major project, but then I realized I was spending two hours a day going through my emails. The resources for focus were already there. I just wasn't seeing them clearly. So here's what I've learned through this process. When I operate from abundance thinking, when I focus on maximizing what I have, instead of lamenting what I lack, I'm not just more productive. I'm happier, I sleep better. I'm more present with the people that I love. I believe that the stoics are right. Contentment comes from appreciating and maximizing what you already possess. And you know what? My divorce could have derailed everything. Ending my military career definitely could have left me bitter and stuck, but those changes forced me to ask different questions. Not why did this happen to me, but what can I build from here? And this is the mindset shift that didn't just change my professional trajectory, it changed my entire life. As Seneca wrote, every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. Working through this resourceful action concept always reminds me of those moments in life where Intel work meant that we had to accomplish these critical missions with whatever resources were available. The best outcomes often came when we focused on maximizing what we had instead of lamenting on what we didn't have. So try this experiment together with me for the next week. We're gonna catch ourselves every time we think I don't have enough. Let's just pause and ask, what do I have that I'm not fully using? I'm genuinely curious what I'm gonna discover, and I wanna know what you discover along the way too, because there is a gap between our perceived limitations and our actual capabilities and how that shift might look, not just on our professional results, but also our daily sense of peace and satisfaction. I love this lesson because it brings back to me. This understanding that resourceful action. It's actually about recognizing that we have more than we realize, more capability, more support, more opportunities that we're currently leveraging. When we see that truly in abundance, when we start operating from that place of gratitude and possibility, instead of scarcity and limitation, everything changes our results. And our happiness. Now we're coming to the end of our show and this closing segment is called Get the Gear. Thank you for your feedback. I appreciate knowing that this is one of your favorite segments. I wanna make sure that you have access to Greg McKeown's book, essentialism, the Disciplined Pursuit of Less. This book will fundamentally shift how you think about constraints and resource allocation. McKeown shows you how fewer things done extraordinarily well create more impact than trying to do everything adequately. The Amazon link is in your show notes, and yes, that is an affiliate link, which means that if you purchase through it, that means that you are supporting the show at no extra cost to you. And if this episode helped you see your resources differently, your challenge is to connect with us. Keep the conversation going at join dot others over yourself.com and be sure to recognize like-minded leaders that are around you. They are a source of capital for you because together we'll all learn about how to operate through abundance rather than scarcity. And if you have yet to subscribe to my channel, please do because it helps us other ambitious leaders discover how to have a systematic approach so that we can all turn our constraints into competitive advantages. Next Tuesday, I'm sitting down with a guest who has figured out how to thrive in life while being fully present for her personal family without the guilt. Without the compartmentalization that we're taught and without sacrificing excellence in either one of those areas of life, forget the idea of balance. What we're gonna do is align. We are not looking at what mission-driven integration looks like on two different paths, personal and professional. We're looking at aligning them, bringing them together so that we can have a unified purpose with our entire whole being. I'm Shelly Rood, and you can count on me returning next Tuesday with another dose of sustainable excellence and practical wisdom specifically for hardcore leaders like us who refuse to go over the edge. It's my joy, honor to be with you today. Thank you for listening.