Living Your Legacy

You don’t have to wait until you’ve  left this realm to start sharing and creating your legacy.  You can choose to live it right here, right now.

When we think of the word Legacy, we tend to think of it as a bequest – a gift by will, especially money or personal property left to us when someone dies.  However for us, Living our Legacy rather than just leaving it, has become a part of our daily lives.

A definition we prefer is that it’s about the richness of the individual’s life, including what that person accomplished and the impact he or she had on people and places. Ultimately, the story of a person’s life reflects the individual’s legacy. 

Recently a dear friend of ours passed away and during the celebration of her life a poem was read that highlighted for us, just how authentically she had Lived her Legacy.  

That poem is The Dash – 

“I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning… to the end.

He noted that first came the date of birth and spoke of the following date with tears, but he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time they spent alive on earth and now only those who loved them know what that little line is worth…”

We realised that our friend had in fact not only left a lasting legacy for many people but was also the epitome of someone that  Lived her Legacy, day in and day out. Truly living her ‘Dash’.

Afterwards we were reflecting on the poignancy of this.  Living our Legacy is something we made a conscious decision to do many years ago.  We were brainstorming on what we could leave behind for our family after we died.  And during our reflections, we suddenly realised that what we did whilst we were alive and able to spend time with our family and friends, probably mattered a whole lot more than after we were gone.  

Key for us was living as balanced a life as possible – body, mind and spirit, and being an example in the first instance to our family. And then inspiring others through our own thoughts, words and actions.

 How do you start to create your Living Legacy? 

1. Be the best you can be – in body, mind and spirit.
2. You don’t have to think Big to have a BIG IMPACT – small gestures can often make a big difference.
3. Living a purposeful life and helping others in a multitude of ways.

We started by focussing on being the healthiest we could be in body, mind and spirit so we were then able to inspire others to live their best lives.  And whilst we’re not perfect and we fall off the wagon every now and then, our daily intent is to live our best lives, touch other’s lives in the best way possible and inspire others to Live their Legacy too.

Think of the people who have inspired or excited you, mentored or coached you, perhaps given you a helping hand through gifting goods, services or moolaa.  All of these people were living their legacy.

For us, living a purposeful life is moving towards our goals that are aligned with our values and passions and makes us happy; and this is what drives our legacy.   A myriad of experiences, memories and moments make up our lives.  Take care of these and hold them gently in your hands.  This life is less about what we’ve earned and more about who we’ve loved.  Less about the life lived and more about who you live that life with – in the broader sense – our soul family.

As our friend Emily Gowor says,  “Living your legacy is about every person you touch along the way.”