Begin Again: The Discipline of the Reset

PG Geldenhuys
14 hours ago
4 min read

There’s something wonderfully humbling about preparing for your 22nd cycle race and almost not making it to the starting line because you forgot to register.

Yep. That was me this week.

Twenty-two Cape Town Cycle Tours. You’d think by now I’d have a checklist tattooed on my forearm. Training rides? Done. Early mornings? Done. Legs burning on Suikerbossie? Done.

But somewhere between client workshops on EOS and ChatGPT, transcript deep-dives, and hiring frameworks, I forgot the most basic administrative step: actually entering the race.

Too busy training to do the prep work required to play. It’s funny, but not funny ha-ha. It’sslightly embarrassing. And also a metaphor.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working with entrepreneurs on combining EOS with transcript technology and AI. We’ve been focusing heavily on hiring because it’s one of the most common pain points I see. Founders hire smart people. Impressive CVs. Solid interviews.

And six months later, the relationship isn’t working.

These founders are smart. They train hard. They do the capability work. But they often forget to register for the race that really matters: values alignment.

Most hiring processes interrogate skills and experience. Very few interrogate behaviour under pressure. And behaviour under pressure is where culture either compounds or collapses.

To hire well, you have to be crystal clear about your core values and the behaviours attached to them. Not inspirational nouns. Observable actions. And I love sport analogies because they make this visible.

Inside the Springbok environment, the value system is not fluffy. There’s an explicit “no entitlement” rule. Jerseys are not owned; they’re earned. Every week. Every camp.

There’s also what I think of as the “dog in the fight” rule. Cheslin Kolbe, the smallest guy on the field, chases kicks and defenders as if physics is a suggestion. Pieter-Steph du Toit, built like a freight train, makes tackle after tackle as if it’s his debut.

Different physiques, same behaviour, and a common mantra: Never give up. Never coast. Show up like it’s your first day.

That’s not motivational language, because Rassie is a k*k motivational speaker (by his own admission). It’s cultural infrastructure, and that’s different.

Golf reveals the same principle in a different way. Rory McIlroy once missed a short putt that would have won the Masters outright. Walking back to the tee for the playoff, his caddie leaned in and said something beautifully grounding: “If I told you on Wednesday you’d be in a playoff on Sunday, you’d have taken it.” Give that caddie a Bells, and it worked, didn’t it?

Perspective. Reset. Forget the miss. Play the next shot.

He did. He won, and until Anthony Kim became golf’s next great redemption story, it’s one of the grandest moments we all witnessed.

Talking about AK, just wow. Two weeks ago, in Australia, the man-that-would-be-Tiger, the cautionary tale of hubris and cocaine and a talent squandered, roared back into the zeitgeist with an astounding last round to take out superstars Bryson and Rahm and win himself a cool $4 mil. All the snorting has ruined his nose and his face, but the mental and physical game is still there, and 3 years sober plus his adorable family... it speaks to a mental reset that should inspire all of us.

In hiring, it means not being seduced by a polished interview but coming back to your core values and asking: Does this person behave in alignment with who we are under stress? In leadership, it means not letting last quarter’s win turn into entitlement. And in sport, it means the previous hole has no authority over the next swing.

In my own life, it means acknowledging that I’m very good at training and occasionally sloppy at administration. I can be so focused on performance that I neglect the systems that enable it. That’s why I bring an ace on admin on board every time, and Caren is quickly learning the ropes that allow me to do my best work in front of the audience.

I’m not alone in this. Founders obsess over strategy, sales, and scale, but forget the foundational discipline of defining values clearly enough to hire against them. And we are surprised when the candidate is a dud, because we overtrain the muscles and neglect the paperwork.

The deeper pattern, at least for me, is this: I struggle with the reset. Yesterday’s frustration, a tense conversation, a bad golf shot, an administrative oversight...they all want to linger in the background process of my mind.

But elite performance, whether in green and gold or on a Sunday fairway, demands something cleaner. Begin again.

The Springboks do it every test, Rory did it on the 18th tee, and on Sunday, I’ll do it at the start line of my 22nd race.

Not thinking about missed registrations or missed putts. Not leaning on reputation. Just being present. Just riding the next kilometre. It’s hard, hey. But then hard things are the only things really worth doing.