Nick Saban’s One Secret That Every Prepper Should Practice

by Todd Walker

In case you’re unfamiliar with Nick Saban, he’s the head football coach at the University of Alabama. Why bring up a football coach on a preparedness blog?

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As an old football coach myself, I enjoy learning from others who find a way to consistently succeed in the face of overwhelming odds. Under Coach Saban’s leadership, his Crimson Tide football team has won the last two B.C.S. national championship games and seems to be rolling toward their third consecutive title. I know. I feel the haters! But ya gotta hand it to him, he’s doing something right.

What’s Saban’s Secret of success?

His daily process is responsible for his team’s phenomenal success!

In his own words:

“Well, the process is really what you have to do day in and day out to be successful.” [Emphasis added]

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Seems simple, right?

Well, it is, sort of.

Since you’re reading this, being prepared is probably a general goal for you and your family. Even with specific, measurable, realistic goals, you’re not going to reach them without establishing and practicing a daily process.

True, people can stumble along and reach a goal from time to time. Even a blind pig finds an acorn from time to time.

Being a SmartPrepper, you’re different. You not only want to survive, you want to thrive in troubled times! That takes Doing the Stuff with consistent, boring regularity.

[By the way, Saban’s Secret works for prepping, business, blogging, sports, health, fitness, relationships, education, and everything else in life!]

You see, the secret to making progress in your preps is to stop focusing on the goal. The goal is the destination. The process is the path that gets you there.

I call it a ‘path’ intentionally. The process is the unbeaten path, not a superhighway. When you exit the goal-setting highway to follow a process, you’ll begin to notice fewer people on the path.

Why?

Everyone sets goals. But not everyone is willing to commit to the daily process to realize achievement.

I’ll throw in my personal example related to optimal health. I began a journey to better health and fitness in 2010. I realized I wasn’t physically prepared to be useful to my family for the long-term. I hated the thought of being a liability to those I loved.

I had set weight-loss goals and physical strength goals before and failed. The difference this time was I didn’t set specific goals, I simply followed a daily process that produced results – results beyond my expectations.

I lost 50 pounds, gained overall body strength, and killed my sugar craving! These benefits happened by following the process – without being a slave to goals.

Here’s why you should stop chasing goals.

• Goals are heavy, pressure-packed things. If you don’t meet a goal, you have the tendency to feel like a failure. (Am I the only one that does this?)
• Unmet goals wreck momentum. You turn into a car-be-que on the goal-setting superhighway. You wait on the curb until you get repaired. Or until the goal-setting tow truck drags you and your goals to the junkyard.
• Goals are short-term – the process is long-term. Have you ever gone on a diet, achieved your goal weight, stopped the process that got you there, and gained it all back, plus some?
• Goals are sexy – the process is boring. Your health goal may be to looking good naked again. Very admirable! Without a process, the goal is nothing more than a plan.

The thought of setting a goal to lose 50 pounds would have stopped me before I even started. What I found was that if I ignored goals and followed a daily process, I easily reached and exceeded my unwritten goals.

The Prepping Process

There’s a wide range of scary events we’re told to get ready for: all manner of personal SHTF situations, everyday emergencies, job loss, natural disasters, food shortages, economic collapse, societal collapse, hyper-inflation, martial law, government tyranny, and for some, the Zombie Apocalypse.

So we set specific goals to reach in x amount of time.

• Water – Have twelve ways to Sunday to purify, store, and treat
• Food – Have, at a minimum, a one year supply of stuff we eat
• Security – Have an assortment of guns and ammo in common calibers
• Shelter – Have …. (and the list goes on and on)

These are great goals to set. But goals won’t keep you fed, clothed, or covered.

Here’s a few ideas to help you apply Saban’s Secret to your preparedness and self-reliance plan. You can try it or not. If you do, let us know how it works out for you.

1. Don’t look for immediate results. Build small changes into your lifestyle. Too big, too quick can be overwhelming. You’re personality may be an all-in type. If so, jump in with both feet. But you’re in this for the long run. It’s a long journey, remember!
2. Be patient and wise with time. Creating a daily prepping process takes time. You have the same amount of time in each day as Nick Saban. People have written entire novels in their spare time. Use those hours lost in traffic listening to podcasts on preparedness.
3. Observe your results. Once you’ve committed to the process, measure the small results. The pantry is growing since you’re adding small amounts of extra food on each trip to the market. Your jeans are getting loose. Feedback loops keep you going on the right path.
4. Test your process. If you’re not seeing the desired results, tweak your process. Don’t be afraid to scrap it completely and start over. Find and stick to a process that works for your personality.
5. Be ‘good enough.’ Perfection is highly overrated! Alabama’s win-loss record was blemished with one loss in each of their last two championship seasons. The reason they didn’t fold after these setbacks points to Saban’s Secret. They kept following his process.
6. You control your process. Prepping is geared towards future events out of our control. You had no vote in whether the parasitic elites would force Obama’s sick-care on our nation, or continue their print-and-spend policies to bail out their too-big-to-fail crony banksters, or which third-world country to drone next. Nope. Those decisions are above the commoner’s pay grade. But you do control your process. And that’s your best chance at winning in the game.
7. Recruit the best players. Prepping, contrary to the lone-wolf ideal and OPSEC (Operational Security) concerns, is like a team sport. You need to be a part of a team. And your on-line fantasy prepping team doesn’t count. Sorry. You need real, live, physical people on your team. You can’t plan for all the unknown unknowns!
8. Stop window shopping. Starring at the merchandise in the window day in and day out won’t make you prepared. Your desire to be prepared continues to grow. But here’s the catch – there’s a price tag. That price tag doesn’t change your desire. You still want it. But you’ve got to pay the price up front. We call it ‘Doing the Stuff’ around here.

To reach your preparedness goals, a process of systematically ‘Doing the Stuff’ is fundamental to success. Gimmicks can’t replace the process.

The new year is almost here. Set all the goals you like, but keep in mind that your process is the path you must follow to hit your targets.

My goal for 2014 is to master my prepping process. What’s yours?

Keep Doing the Stuff!

Todd

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