The Ascent Protocol
Your Renaissance Begins Here
A six-stage process to prepare you for the journey from where you are to where you're meant to be! New stages drop every Friday through mid-July, followed by the Readiness Protocols that will help you improve performance based on your assessment.
Life has a way of bringing us to our knees. Sometimes it's a single devastating blow—the loss of someone we love, a career that crumbles, a dream that dies. Other times it's the slow accumulation of disappointments, compromises, and quiet surrenders that leave us wondering how we got so far from who we thought we'd become.
If you're reading this, chances are you've been through your own storm. Maybe you're still in it. Perhaps you're just emerging, blinking in the unfamiliar light, trying to figure out what comes next.
I know this territory well. Over the past few months, I've written about grief—the raw, unrelenting kind that follows losing my siblings as a young man, my friends in Iraq and Afghanistan, and most recently, my mother, the woman who shaped my understanding of love, strength, and what it means to be human. The journey through loss has taught me something profound: the very experiences that break us open also prepare us for our greatest ascents.
But there comes a moment when staying in the valley, no matter how familiar it's become, is no longer an option. There comes a time when the summit calls.
The Mountain Teaches What the Classroom Cannot
In 2017, I stood at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro with my friend Ivan—a warrior who lost his sight to a mortar exploding on a rooftop in Iraq but refused to let blindness limit his horizons. We were part of the Waterboys, a remarkable organization of NFL players and veterans working to bring clean water to East Africa by drilling wells across Tanzania and Kenya. My mission seemed straightforward: guide Ivan to the summit of Africa's highest peak while supporting a cause that transforms communities. What could go wrong for a Special Forces colonel who'd spent decades in the world's most challenging environments?
Everything, as it turned out.
My mistake wasn't underestimating the mountain—every soldier knows to respect the terrain. My mistake was overestimating my ability to carry someone else's load while managing my own. In my determination to pull Ivan up that mountain, I burned through my energy reserves and oxygen tolerance at a reckless pace. By day four, during the final push to the top, acute mountain sickness hit me like a freight train. While Ivan continued his ascent with other guides, I found myself descending, defeated, sick, and forced to confront a humbling truth.
I had failed my mission because I hadn't properly assessed my capabilities, my resources, or the true demands of the task ahead.
Two years later, in 2019, I returned to Kilimanjaro with the Waterboys again—the same incredible group of NFL players and veterans committed to bringing clean water to East Africa. This time, I climbed solo within the group, but with a completely different approach. Before taking a single step up that mountain, I spent extensive time at base camp—not just acclimatizing to the altitude, but conducting what the military calls an "honest assessment of capabilities and conditions."
I inventoried everything: my physical conditioning, my gear, my nutrition plan, my backup systems. I studied weather patterns, route options, and potential hazards. Most importantly, I acknowledged my limitations and planned within them rather than beyond them.
The difference was remarkable. The same mountain that had sent me home sick and defeated two years earlier became the stage for one of my most meaningful victories. Not because the mountain had changed, but because I had learned to see clearly where I stood before attempting to move forward.
Base Camp Assessment: The Foundation of Every Successful Ascent
This is Stage 1 of what I'm calling The Ascent Protocol—a six-stage framework for personal renaissance that I've developed through decades of military leadership, spiritual exploration, and the hard-won wisdom that comes from both spectacular failures and hard-fought victories.
Whether you're emerging from grief, recovering from failure, or simply recognizing that your current life doesn't match your deepest values and aspirations, every meaningful transformation begins with the same critical step: an honest assessment of where you stand.
This isn't about judgment or self-criticism. It's about clarity. You can't navigate to where you want to go if you don't know where you are. You can't plan an ascent without understanding your current altitude, available resources, and the conditions you're facing.
In mountaineering, base camp assessment covers four essential areas:
Position: Where exactly are you on the mountain?
Resources: What equipment, supplies, and support do you have available?
Conditions: What's the current weather, and what's the forecast?
Capacity: What's your actual ability to handle the challenges ahead?
The same framework applies to life transitions. After any significant disruption—loss, failure, betrayal, or simply the gradual realization that you're living someone else's version of your life—you need to take stock with the same methodical honesty that separates successful climbers from cautionary tales.
Your Base Camp Assessment
Position: Where Are You? Not where you thought you'd be by now. Not where others expect you to be. Where are you standing today? This requires stripping away the stories we tell ourselves and others about where we "should" be and dealing with reality as it exists.
After my mother's death, I have acknowledged that grief makes you question everything—your sense of purpose, relationships, and understanding of what matters.
When you are forced to a lower altitude, in terrain that feels foreign despite decades of navigating challenging circumstances, you need a plan to climb.
Your disruption might be different, but the need for honest positioning is the same. Are you financially stable or struggling?
Are your relationships authentic or performance-based?
Is your work meaningful or soul-crushing?
Are you physically strong or running on fumes?
The answers aren't right or wrong—they're your starting coordinates.
Resources: What's Actually in Your Pack? This isn't about what you wish you had or what you used to have. What resources—skills, relationships, knowledge, financial assets, spiritual practices, support systems—are available to you right now?
During my failed Kilimanjaro attempt, I thought I had the resource of unlimited determination. What I had was a middle-aged body that needed proper pacing and a mind that hadn't fully processed the physical demands of high-altitude climbing while supporting another climber. My second attempt succeeded partly because I inventoried my actual resources rather than my imagined ones.
Take stock of your tangible assets: the friend who returns your calls, not the one who posts supportive comments on social media but can’t be reached during a crisis. The skills you've developed through experience, not the ones you think you should have. The financial resources you can access, not the ones you hope to have someday.
Conditions: What's the Weather Really Like? Every climber knows that summit conditions can change rapidly, but the assessment has to be based on current reality, not wishful thinking. What are the actual conditions in your life right now?
Maybe you're dealing with aging parents, young children, job uncertainty, health challenges, or relationship strain. Perhaps the economic climate is uncertain, or your industry is shifting, or your community is in flux. These aren't excuses—they're conditions that affect your route planning.
When I returned to Kilimanjaro, I didn't pretend the mountain would be easier the second time. The mountain didn't change, but my preparation for its conditions made all the difference.
Capacity: What Can You Handle? This might be the most challenging part of the base camp assessment, as it requires an honest self-evaluation without falling into either false modesty or dangerous overconfidence.
Your capacity includes your physical energy, emotional resilience, mental clarity, and spiritual resources. It encompasses your ability to handle stress, maintain healthy relationships, make informed decisions under pressure, and sustain effort over time. It also includes your capacity to learn, adapt, and receive support from others.
I learned on Kilimanjaro that my capacity for helping others is enhanced when I properly manage my own resources. Burning myself out in an attempt to single-handedly carry someone else's load helped no one. Understanding my actual capacity—and operating within it—allowed me to be more effective, not less.
The Courage to See Clearly
Base camp assessment requires a particular kind of courage—the courage to see clearly without sugar-coating or catastrophizing. It's the courage to acknowledge both your limitations and your genuine strengths. It's the courage to face your current reality without immediately trying to fix, change, or escape from it.
This isn't about accepting mediocrity or giving up on your dreams. It's about building your next moves on a foundation of truth rather than wishful thinking. Every successful military operation begins with accurate intelligence about current conditions. Every meaningful life change starts with an honest assessment of where you stand.
As we move through The Ascent Protocol over the coming weeks, each stage will build on this foundation of clear-eyed self-assessment. We'll explore how to identify and develop your hidden arsenal of capabilities, how to map your sacred mission, how to build capacity for higher challenges, how to navigate changing conditions, and ultimately, how to take those first committed steps toward the summit you're meant to reach.
But it all begins here, at base camp, with the courage to look honestly at where you are, what you have, what you're facing, and what you're capable of handling.
The mountain is waiting. Your renaissance is calling.
But first, you have to know where you stand.
Lead with Love,
Doom
Next week in Stage 2: "Gear Check: Auditing Your Arsenal" - We'll explore how to identify the unique combination of experiences, skills, and wisdom you've accumulated through adversity, and how these form your personal equipment for life's greatest climbs.
What's your base camp assessment revealing? I'd love to hear about your current position in the comments below. Remember, there's no shame in being honest about where you are—only in pretending to be somewhere you're not.
This is great! And timely.
My son and I have a shared mantra: "Never let the mountain win." In our case, it mostly pertains to bike riding. Because, even if we have to crawl to the summit, even if we have to stop and rest every thirty pedal strokes, we're always going to make it to the other side. It's gotten me over some of the biggest climbs in the Alps and the Pyrenees, and him over some locals ascents that most seven-year-olds have no business riding. But often, the "mountain" isn't a mountain at all. It's a fear. An emotion. A job to tackle. Something in the way. But we always remind each other to 'Never let the mountain win.'
This made me think of that.