Michael: Welcome to Youth Career Readiness, the One Question Podcast where we talk to people across careers about their professional journeys and what advice they would offer us to help all middle and high schoolers explore, experiment with, and discover careers.
Jean, if you were a Notre Dame football fan, as I was in the 1980s, then Lou Holtz was your guy.
He was the head coach, charismatic, and good.
His 12-0 1988 Notre Dame team was the consensus national champion.
And he’s the only coach that I’m aware of to lead six different schools to bowl games, with four of them finishing in the top 15 nationwide.
For our younger listeners, they may also recognize Lou Holtz because he was a mainstay on ESPN for a decade.
But Holtz has also set himself apart as someone who is really interested in helping young people develop themselves as leaders in life.
Jean: Lou, we can’t thank you enough for joining the podcast.
And the big question we have for you is this.
What career and life advice would you share with middle or high schoolers?
Lou Holtz:
For 11 years, I’ve had football coach at the University of Notre Dame and had an awful lot of difficult questions answered.
But this one might be the most difficult.
I know you’re young, and you wonder, where in the world am I going to go? It’s going to be dependent upon the choices you made. Choose your drug, drop out of school, join a gang, get tattoos from head to bottom, get arrested, you’re choosing to have difficulty in life.
And don’t blame other people. Whatever happens to us, it’s because of choices we make.
And if you follow three simple rules, you’ll always make good choices.
Number one. Do the right thing.
It’s important to always do the right thing, not because somebody’s looking, but because that’s the only way you can build trust with other people.
You cannot be married, you cannot work for a coach or anything else if it’s not based on trust.
And the only way you get trust is by doing the right thing.
Rule number two. Do everything the very best of your ability.
Not everybody can be All American. Not everybody can be All Conference. But everybody can be the best they’re capable of being.
But rule number three might be the most important.
Always show people you care.
And remember this. Most of the time when we understand that when people need love and understanding the most is usually when they deserve it the least.
So your future will be entirely up to you.
Decide what you want to do.
Make that choice.
Make that decision.
If it’s to go to the University of Notre Dame, then ask yourself 20 times a day what’s important now. If you want to go to Notre Dame, you better be a good student. You better be involved in other activities. And you better be an awfully good person that cares about other people.
I could go on and on, but space doesn’t allow me.
But I will say this. There’s so many people that really believe in you and in your future.
So good luck to you. Remember, you can do anything in this world you want if you make good choices.
Follow those three rules.
Always make good choices.
Good luck to you. God bless. Go Irish.
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