What's on your Someday/Maybe List?

by Robertt Young

One of the stories I really like that demonstrates the value of the Someday Maybe list comes from Lou Holtz, the former football coach for Notre Dame and the University of South Carolina. In the story, he tells about a period in his life where he had to take stock of things to figure out how he would live his life. He mentioned the lists he made during that time (which we would call a Someday Maybe list), which followed him over his 40 year career, enabling him to do and accomplish the things he did. My apology to Lou if this is not 100% accurate, but I believe I captured the essence of his story.

Lou was working in the athletic department, specifically the football program at the University of Minnesota, when a friend of his, who was head coach for the University of South Carolina, asked him to be the assistant head coach for their team. Lou was excited and when he told his family about it, they were very supportive, including his wife who was 7 months pregnant. So they sold their home and moved to Columbus, SC. For the first few weeks, Lou was ecstatic with the new job. Then suddenly the head coach was asked to step down which meant Lou’s job was also in jeopardy. As luck would have it, two weeks later, Lou was also fired. This was Lou’s first time to lose a job and when he thought about the situation he was in - no job, new to town, big mortgage and a new baby on the way - he was devastated. He went into a deep depression. His wife had to go out and get a job at a local hospital as an x-ray technician.

Now Lou’s wife was a patient woman, but after three weeks of his moping around, she decided something had to be done. So she bought Lou a book called The Magic of Thinking Big and told him to read it. She also expected him to put some of the book’s recommendations into action. Lou agreed to read the book and he was not impressed until he came across a passage that incorporated the idea, ‘if you feel like you’re not making progress in life, don’t give up and forget your dreams. Make a list of them, keep them in front of you and visit them weekly.’ So Lou followed the author’s recommendations and began to write down all of his dreams, all the things he wanted to do in life. Some of the things he wanted to do were:

1. Jump out of an airplane
2. Meet the Pope
3. Be a great football coach at Notre Dame
4. Take Notre Dame to a football championship
5. Land an airplane on an aircraft carrier
6. Become a motivational speaker
7. Be a sports announcer
8. And on and on until he had written 107 things that he wanted to do.

When his wife returned home, he showed her the list and she said, “ But Lou, your forgot one—GET A JOB! “

The interesting thing about this story is that Lou would look at his list weekly and decide which things, if any, he would actively work on. And over the next 40 years, Lou accomplished 98 of those 108 things. This was Lou Holtz’s Someday Maybe list. What’s yours?