As the college football season begins, I thought I’d relay a story that I read about the famous Notre Dame Coach, Lou Holtz. In 1966 he was 28 years old and his wife was pregnant with his third child and he was the assistant coach at a small school in the South. It was then that he lost that job and was out of work. He read a book called “The Magic of Thinking Big” which encouraged people to think big, dream big. And so he did. He wrote down 107 goals that he deemed “impossible”. They included having dinner at the White House, appearing on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, meeting the Pope, coaching at Notre Dame, leading his team to a national championship and shooting a hole in one.
Lou has now achieved 81 of these goals.
What I love about this is that it shows the importance of dreaming big before we even know how to accomplish it. The “how” is not important in dreaming. If you focus on the “how” all of the time, you’ll get stuck and held back on ever trying. You’ve defeated yourself before you’ve even tried. The more attached you are to the reasons something will never happen, the less likely it will happen.
So, what are your “impossible” goals? Will you make a list of 50 of them this week? I will do the same and I will post those “impossible” goals on my blog by this Friday. Check back in to see what I’ve written and I would love for you to post yours there as well under the “comments” section of the blog.
“If you’re bored with life – you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things – you don’t have enough goals.”
Lou Holtz
