Tag: Living Your Legacy

Your Mark

When I read Seth Godin’s comments on making your mark (his “Soles” post) from last week, something clicked. How about for you? Here’s an excerpt:

“The concrete impact of our lives and our work is the mark you make on other people. It might be a product you make or the way you look someone in the eye. It might be a powerful experience you have on a trip with your dad, or the way you keep a promise.

The experiences you create are the moments that define you. We’ll miss you when you’re gone, because we will always remember the mark you made on us.”

–Seth Godin  (see the full post here)

The particular magic that each of us brings to our interactions with people — these are the gifts that make the difference. And it’s the giving of these particular gifts that is the true purpose of our coming into this world. It is in the giving of the gifts of ourselves, our uniqueness, the sacred center and essence of who we are — these are the signs that we are in the space where we can “make our mark.”

It’s what I call “owning your greatness.” It’s encompassed in the phrase “Living your Legacy.”  The potentiality to make a mark is always there. Our responsibility is to come at it mindfully and for positive, life-enhancing purposes.

5Cs to Live Your Legacy in Words

More than What You Leave Behind, Live Your Legacy in Words

I’ve written about living your legacy before.  It’s that important.  The following action points are part of an upcoming booklet of experts sharing insights on “defining your destiny,” a project coordinated by Paulette Ensign, the  undisputed queen of the tips booklet.

My suggestion: Test out these 5 Cs to bring your legacy alive. Use words. Write it all down. Document your process for yourself and others.

1 Center —

Begin by taking a deep belly-expanding breath or several.  Focus on your heart-center.  Listen for your internal wisdom and directions from inside.  Write them down!

2 Contribute —

From that breath-centered mindfulness, focus on the deepest gifts you are here to share.  Who are the most perfect recipients of your gifts?  Write down who you are here to serve and the gifts you yearn to offer.

3 Create —

Hold in your heart both what you are here to offer and who you are meant to do it for.  Envision what it looks like when those two come together, with results for the highest good.  Write that down.

4 Connect —

Bring your inner connections and ideas into conversation.  Invite your most perfect people into your sacred circle with powerful words and intent.  Connect and LISTEN.  Write down their words, what they want.

5 Commit —

Write down the specifics of your intent and commitment to create, connect, and contribute.  It’s your map for living your legacy.  Build it day by day with conscious actions — to make the difference you came here to make.

World-changers, writers, authors, visionaries, and conscious creators partner with Bobbye Middendorf, The Write Synergies Guru, to clarify their healing messages. If you’re ready for results greater than the sum of the parts, if you need the right words so people “get it,” if you want to make the difference you came here to make, then connect with Bobbye to live your legacy in words and “Write to Sell Without Selling Your Soul.”

Live Your Business Legacy

August’s “What Will Be Your Legacy Month” is a great reminder. Mostly when you hear people talk about “legacies,” it’s all about what’s left behind.  Certainly that’s worth pondering.

But I challenge you to take it up a notch. Realize that what you leave behind starts with your decisions right now, in the present moment. How about living your legacy?  With every word you write and speak, every choice you make, you can connect the decisions to the heart and soul of your deepest commitment and connection to the whole. Make the present moment your moment to, as Gandhi reminded us, “BE the change you wish to see in the world.”

As someone leading a business, you can make a conscious decision right now to make all your choices for the highest good of all concerned. You can even take it the next step to make your decisions that will benefit “all the children of all the species,” (a phrase I’ve embraced from architect and polymath William McDonogh) and for the greater good of Mother Earth herself.

Unfortunately too often what I see in business is a disconnect between what you want to leave behind and the in-your-face necessities of business. How many cut corners does it take for disaster to follow  — especially when the focus is purely on bottom line results?

You are sowing the seeds — right here and right now — of what you leave behind at some future date.  Every decision in the present moment has consequences through time. Is your business living the legacy that you intend? If it is, are you documenting the positive moves?

Maybe this month’s reminder to consider your legacy is a perfect opportunity to look at your personal purpose, why you are here on this planet at this tumultuous time.
*Is your deeply personal, greater soul purpose informing your business actions?
*Are you aligning your business and personal purpose so that you are making the difference in the world that you came here to make?
*Is your business fully reflecting the highest purpose of you, as the leader of your business?

Live your legacy every day in your business by making decisions based on your most heart-felt values!

Write to Live Your Legacy-Blog Challenge Day 6

Legacy, “something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past,” says Merriam-Webster online: It is most commonly considered something you leave behind. It is how you are remembered. Will your words paint the stories of your purpose fulfilled, your passions pursued, your life lived fully in the moment with a presence of love?

Forget the tired old definition, and don’t LEAVE a Legacy. LIVE Your Legacy instead. Live your legacy with your words and writings as well as your actions. Writing to live your legacy: it’s a stunningly powerful way to leave something of value behind.

In reality how you are remembered is created one day and one moment at a time, through interactions, conversations, and yes, the slipstream of your written words. Those synergies make up the raw materials of your legacy. If you are writing, it’s your presence embracing the moment of the writing that creates the memorable and remarkable.

  • Have you considered, rather than “leaving a legacy” behind you, instead to live each day as you wish to be remembered?
  • Have you considered, as you write, to bring to the page the conscious presence of your deepest truest self in the moment?
  • Have you thought it just isn’t possible or it’s too hard to express your gifts as a legacy?

You create what is memorable by how you passed through this world one moment at a time. Doing it with words makes your presence all the more powerful.

Your legacy is constructed of the bricks of consciousness, of the moments of your days stacked one atop and next to the other. It’s much like a dry stone wall–one rock fitted inevitably and perfectly next to the neighboring rock. No filler. No mortar. Just rock by rock. (Similarly Anne Lamott’s famous anecdote in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
gets at this too. Bird by bird, her brother got the report done.)

Whether it’s rock by rock or bird by bird or word by word or tweet by tweet,  your legacy is created like that–day by day, word by word, moment by moment. You construct your legacy a day at a time, one moment and one interaction at a time, just as you live it. How you will be remembered? Will your legacy stand like some of Ireland’s dry rock fences, for centuries?

Follow the 30 Day Blogging Challenge on twitter at #blog30.

How Can Write Synergies Copywriting Best Support YOU?

“Focus instead on how you can help people. Make your reader the center of your blog, and find ways to help your reader succeed (at whatever you’re teaching). The rest — stats and money and all that — will come later.”  So says Leo Baubata in point #13 in  Write to Done, the question, “What’s the most important blogging question I’m not asking? A: You should be asking, “How can I most help my reader?”

So for readers of Write Synergies Copywriting, all of you Conscious Creators,
Visionary writers, authors, publishers, speakers, artists, caregivers, and healers, I ask:
What can I do to support you on your journey?
What are you looking for to help get your message out there?
What would encourage you to step up in Owning Your Greatness?
(And the greatness of your book, project, or venture?)
What support do you need in expressing your gifts and connecting with your audience?
What would your life look like if you were Living Your Legacy?

Let me know!