Have you ever encountered anyone who has chosen lifetime goals and is actually pursuing them? Such people often devise a list of fifty or 100 or more things they want to do during their time on earth.Lou Holtz, the former football coach at Notre Dame, is one such person.

Early on in his career, Holtz devised a roster of 107 goals he wanted to accomplish in his life. Some were ordinary, if personally challenging, such as to have all four of his children graduate from college. Some were a tad risky, such as learning how to sky dive. Some of Holtz’s goals might make your list as well, such as meeting the President of the United States and being a guest at a White House dinner.

Putting Intrigue in Your Life

The notion of drawing up a list of fifty or 100 things you want to do before you die is most intriguing. After all, you can put down anything you want on your list, you don’t have to show it to anyone else, and you can make it as wild as you want.

For many people who make lifetime goals, extensive travel, especially to specific destinations, frequently ends up making the list. Surprisingly, many people include goals that relate to improving their intellect such as learning other languages, reading classic literature and so on.

Chew on These

Here are some ideas to help you devise your own list. Aim for fifty goals initially, and then perhaps move on to 100 later. Be forewarned, however, most people can get to about twenty or twenty-five, and then find that the going gets slow. That’s okay, as long as you begin to build the list, you’re still traveling down a path that can result in wondrous developments in your life.

Some Ideas of Things To Do During Your Life:

• Learn how to fly a plane.
• Speak Japanese, Russian, or Farsi fluently.
• Camp for two fabulous weeks in Yosemite National Park.
• Trace your ancestry back to the year 1600.
• Spend a week on tour with The Rolling Stones.

• White-water raft the Colorado River, in the Grand Canyon.
• Be a contestant on the TV quiz show Jeopardy.
• Spend an entire summer touring the U.S. in a motor home.
• Read fifty of the classics.
• Take a five-mile walk along the Great Wall of China.
• Have seats on the fifty-yard line at the Super Bowl.

• Take a balloon ride over the Oldevi Gorge in Africa.
• Learn how to interpret dreams.
• Teach a university course on the meaning of life.
• Shop on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills with reckless abandon.
• Run with the bulls at Pamplona.

• Pay for a needy student’s college education.
• Attend the Christmas Mass at the Vatican.
• Ride the old Patagonia railroad the length of South America.
• Go ice fishing in the Yukon.
• Learn how to flamenco dance.

• Be madly in love with your spouse twenty years from now.
• Learn how to play the piano.
• Have your own TV or radio talk show.
• Establish a local battered spouse’s shelter.
• Go deep-sea diving for a buried treasure.
• Become an editor at Macmillan Books.
• Drive a race car in a NASCAR event.
• Play two-man volleyball on the beach in Venice, California.
• Watch the sunset on top of a mountain in Tucson, Arizona.
• Become a faith healer.

• Be able to successfully do magic tricks.
• Be a stand-up comedian one night at the Improv.
• Learn a musical instrument at the Julliard School of Music.
• Rent a small cottage for the summer at Martha’s Vineyard.
• Attend your high school class’ 60^th reunion.

• Explore the ancient ruins of Egypt with an archeologist.
• Have your poems published.
• Go on a two-month cruise around the world.
• Be selected as Time magazine’s person of the year.
• Have a bit role in a major motion picture.

• Serve your district as a Congressional Representative.
• Maintain an urban street garden for the enjoyment of others.
• Learn how to meditate.
• Visit the president at Camp David.
• Join in a Renaissance Festival as a costumed character.

• Have a hospital wing named after you.
• Serve as a big brother or big sister.
• Learn to recite the Gettysburg Address.
• Be a guest of the Royal Family in London.
• Hunt wild game in the outreaches of Borneo.

• Attend a concert at the opera house in Sydney, Australia.
• Be on a float during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
• Welcome in the new year with your loved one at Time Square.
• Be interviewed in a feature article for Forbes magazine.
• Reach your fiftieth wedding anniversary.

• Meet your great-grandchildren.
• Be a guest on Good Morning America.
• Have your recipe win a city-wide contest.
• Win the Nobel Peace Prize for humanity
• House a homeless person until he gets back on his feet.

• Go a whole year without watching television.
• Volunteer to help someone learn how to read.
• Attend the opening ceremonies at the Summer Olympics.
• Write the lyrics to a hit song.
• Help your son or daughter buy his or her first home..
• Learn how to sing like a professional.

Now It’s Your Turn

As you can see, the list contains a mixture of the wild, the grandiose and the relatively simple. Now, it’s your turn. Devise your own roster of at least ten things you want to do in this life.

Don’t Be Surprised

Hereafter, when you encounter people who engage in one amazing activity or achieve one outstanding accomplishment after another, don’t be surprised. Chances are, these people have devised such a list for themselves. They are champion goal-setters and goal-reachers. They intend for their lives to be exciting.

You’ve heard the old axiom that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. More importantly, you want to prepare yourself so that wondrous activities and events can unfold for you, and so that you are more prepared to engage in the mysterious and the unexpected opportunities that emerge. You won’t be lacking in spontaneity and you certainly won’t be one of the people who sits around on the weekend figuring out what to do with his or her life.

There Are Limits

Often I encounter written materials or lecturers who claim that “nothing is impossible.” I cringe at such talk, because I know it is simply not true. Many things are impossible based on the known laws of physics. For example:

• you won’t be vacationing on the sun very soon.
• reversing the aging process, as in converting a forty-year-old back to age ten, seems well out of reach.
• traveling back in time and changing the course of history is tenuous at best.

The value in the “nothing’s impossible” type of thinking is that it can help to expand your horizons.

What is Possible is Astounding

Some things are impossible. Yet many things that appear to be out of the question as far as you can presently conceive your life are, in fact, quite possible. This is all the more reason to begin your fifty or 100 item list and to even add some items that seem totally out of the question based on what you now know or believe. Put them down anyway.

As time passes, you may begin to see reasons why these seemingly impossible goals are indeed within your grasp.