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Whenever someone gets an aliyah on Rosh Hashanah in our shul, I ask them to make a commitment for the coming year. It can be financial. It can be a mitzvah. It can be something personal. There’s no checklist; it just needs to be something meaningful to that person.

One person - let's call him Yankel - has made a commitment every single year for at least the last 20 years that I’ve known him! When he came up for his aliyah this year, I asked him what commitment he was taking on. I knew he had been thinking about it for months and was curious what he’d come up with.

“I'm going to say Modeh Ani every morning,” he declared.

Amazing! Think about how conditioned we are to pick up our phones as soon as we wake up in the morning and check for anything that came in overnight - texts, emails, meetings, pictures. But here’s Yankel saying, “No, I’m going to pause every morning as soon as I open my eyes and say twelve simple but important words: “Modeh ani lefanecha melech chai v’kayam shehechezarta bi nishmati bechemla raba emunatecha. I thank You, living and enduring King, for You have graciously returned my soul within me. Great is Your faithfulness.”

Thank You, G-d, for giving me another day.

It's such a small thing. It takes less than 30 seconds. But it sets the tone for the entire day.

Then another guy - let's call him Jack - came up for an aliyah.

Now, I know Jack had a difficult year. I know how incredibly busy he is. And I know that for him, adding one more thing to an already overflowing life was not exactly going to be easy. So I thought, let me not ask for too much.

"Jack, I want you to make one commitment. Just one. And ideally, do it before Yom Kippur."

"What is it?"

"Put Tefillin one time. Just once! Any day between now and Yom Kippur."

And he agreed. A one-time, manageable commitment.

Two days later, Jack emailed me: "Rabbi, remember I made a commitment on Rosh Hashanah to put on tefillin? I did it! And I loved it so much that I'm going to do it every morning."

Wait. What?

I kept reading.

"And I'm also going to say Modeh Ani every morning."

A huge smile broke across my face.

The guy I asked to do one mitzvah once had just decided to do two every single morning! And so far, he's been doing it. Every morning.

So now I'm trying to push it one step further. "Jack, why don't you come to our daily minyan?"

He's thinking about it. Maybe he'll come. Maybe he won't. But he’s already come out a winner with two huge new mitzvahs.

It’s easy to think we have to completely change our lives to make meaningful change. And we avoid taking any steps, because it feels so huge and overwhelming.

The key is to just start. With one thing. Anything.

And that one small mitzvah opens the door to the next one, and the next. And suddenly, without even planning it, your whole morning -and then your whole day, and your whole week - looks different.

So, where to start?

There's something particularly powerful about the first moments of the day. Before the demands and chaos begin.

Take 30 seconds to thank G-d for the day. That’s all it takes. Say Modeh Ani. Remember who you are and Who gave you another day.

At the very least, it will set you up for a more intentional day.

But it may also lead to a spiritual climb you can’t even imagine!

I was getting ready for our family trip to South Africa earlier this summer, and while no one can claim that packing for a trip with eight children is relaxing, we are old hands at it by now.

But this time, I ran into a very specific problem: I couldn't find my Shabbat pants.

And I started having feelings of deja vu. I’d been here before.

A couple of years ago, I flew to Israel and somehow couldn't find my Shabbat pants. And it was a bigger problem than you might expect! You can’t just walk into a store in Israel on a Friday afternoon and ask, "Excuse me, do you happen to have a nice pair of Shabbat pants in exactly my size?" So you walk into an Israeli shul with a mismatched suit—weekday pants and a shabbat jacket— and they think, “these Americans sure are strange people!”

This time, I was determined not to make the same mistake.

I searched everywhere. Every drawer.

I asked my kids to help. I asked my wife.

At one point, I'm fairly sure the entire family was more invested in finding my pants than in packing their own clothes.

But nothing turned up. They seemed to have evaporated into thin air.

Eventually, I made peace with my fate: We would land in Cape Town on Thursday night, without much time to shop and limited options. Maybe I'll find a store, maybe I won't. And if I don't? I'll wear regular pants on Shabbat. What can you do?

So we stopped the search and sent everyone back to packing their own belongings.

We flew. We landed. We got to the Airbnb. And I started unpacking.

When I opened my suitcase, they were right there. My long-searched-for Shabbat pants, sitting right in my suitcase, exactly where they needed to be.

I just stared at them, incredulous, and then I started laughing as it hit me all at once: I’d been so determined to avoid a repeat of what happened in Israel, that I’d packed them in advance, only to forget and end up turning the entire house upside down.

We all had a good laugh and I enjoyed feeling properly dressed for Shabbat. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there’s a great lesson here as we prepare for Rosh Hashanah.

So many of us are searching. For answers, meaning, happiness, fulfillment … whatever we feel is missing.

And we’ll go to great lengths to find the answers. “Who can help me?” we wonder. So we run to all kinds of professionals - rabbis, therapists, specialists, teachers. We call our friends. We ask our spouse. We even ask our kids.

But there is one place that is so easy to overlook - a place where no one else can go: Inside yourself.

We all have a neshama, a soul, a piece of Hashem, which knows exactly what we need to do. It knows who you really are and what you're capable of.

Instead of running around looking for answers, sometimes we need to turn inwards and ask ourselves: Who am I? What am I here for? What kind of person do I want to become? What is my neshama actually asking of me? What have I been avoiding?

So as we approach Rosh Hashanah, maybe we could all do a little less searching outside ourselves, and a little more searching within.

If you just trust yourself, you’ll discover that the strength you're looking for is already inside you.

May Hashem grant each and every one of us a year of health, happiness, nachas, success, and revealed blessings.

And may we all have the courage to look in the right place.

Shana tova!