Your legacy is a choice. One of the things Dad repeated to me often was, “What you do speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you say.” Like so many of his quotes and sayings, it was not original to him. I’ve subsequently seen it attributed to Zig Ziglar as well as at least a dozen philosophers dating back to Confucius. Still, Dad is the first person I ever heard it from, and so it’s his voice I hear. He also said, “When you know what you want your legacy to be, you will naturally behave in a manner that builds that legacy.”
You see, just saying, “This is what I want my legacy to be,” is meaningless unless you proactively do the things that will create that legacy.
Many people ramble through their lives without determining what they want their legacy to be. There is nothing wrong with that; it merely leaves the definition of one’s legacy to others. To be genuinely significant, though, I believe you must decide how you want others to remember you and set about making those memories a reality. Deciding what impact you want to leave on the world is crucial to bringing it about. Why would you leave that to chance?
Have you really considered what you want your legacy to be? What are the actions that will bring about that legacy? What are the acts, errors, or missteps that could prevent that legacy from coming to fruition? Defining these things now allows you to be proactive. It enables you to measure everything you do or say against the standard of “will this help or hinder my legacy?” so that you can then make decisions and act accordingly.
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