It Takes What It Takes

​This is that week. That week of tension between saying goodbye to the past year and looking with hope to the new one ahead.

I've always favored the looking ahead side of that tension. Maybe because I've had more years in my life I've been ready to be done with than years I've wanted to hold onto 🤷‍♂️.

In fairness to me, though, I think it's also because I've always been a fairly hopeful person. And there's little more hopeful to me than new beginnings, and maybe nothing offers us a greater chance at new beginnings than a new year.

As I've looked into the new year, the last several years I've reflected on something Nick Saban once said:

Saban said, "The fact of the matter is, if you want to be good, you don't have a lot of choices. It takes what it takes. You have to do what you have to do to be successful."

Many of us go into a new year setting new years resolutions. Most us know exactly what it takes to achieve those resolutions. So, if come February or March we are no longer on a path to achieving them, it's not because we forgot the path, it's because we allowed ourselves to believe that there are alternative paths.

We allowed ourselves to believe we could make choices other than the choices it takes.

The older I get, the more I'm coming to believe having choices is overrated. Maybe even destructive. Too often choices become distractions and not opportunities.

Because deep down I believe we all know the choices that are best for us in any given moment or season. Most of us know what it takes. It's the choices outside of what it takes that invite us in to thinking otherwise.

I encourage you to do what I'll be doing the next couple of days. I'm going to be writing down the two or three things I want to be good at next year. Things I want to change or overcome. Then I'll write down the two or three specific things I'll have to do each day or week to be successful.

I'm going to write down my personal it takes what it takes list....

Maybe you want to be good at running. Or nutrition. Or going to the gym.

Maybe you want to be good at writing. Or relationships. Or parenting. Or your faith.

Maybe you want to be good at sending thank you cards or reading books or making the world cup soccer team.

I don't know what's important in your life. I don't know what dreams you've dreamed for a dozen New Years only to see them not come true. I don't know what, come December 31, 2025, will leave you feeling like this is a year you want to hold onto.

But I know what it takes to get you there. It takes limiting your choices to doing what it takes.

Write it down, like you have discovered an old family recipe. And cook it every day, like it's an old family recipe passed down for generations. This is not the year to experiment with the ingredients. To mess with a family tradition. It doesn't need a sprinkle of this or a dash of that.

It needs what it needs. And nothing else.

Make this the year of no other choices.

None other than doing what it takes.