The How and Why of Everyday Legacies (Part 5)

And do you care about the Legacy left?

If you stop and think about your Legacy

Are you considering your impacts?

Or just happy to let it be?

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From the song ‘Footprints’

By DJ Iron, MindsOne

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We continue exploring the five P’s of Everyday Legacy Mindsets.

A quick review: Purpose represents your ‘why,’ Principles your ‘how,’ Personal your ‘who,’ Present your ‘when,’ and Perspectives your ‘what.’

These foundational elements combine to generate the sixth P, the Potency of Everyday Legacies, to amplify your impact and expand your reach with others and your environment.

This article delves into the fourth P, Present.

Regrettably, Legacy evokes the need to accumulate wealth, notoriety, profound accomplishments, or children. Legacies do not require any of these elements.

This traditional Legacy definition makes it available only to select groups and is outdated and unhelpful.

Defining Legacy as the impact you have on others, your environment, and what you leave behind is more accurate, useful, and inclusive. Thus, Legacy is relevant to everyone.

You perpetually live and leave your Legacies every moment of every day. You constantly generate an impact that ripples out in ways you will never realize. The vital question for you is whether the Legacies you live and leave are the ones you want.

Unfortunately, Legacies are associated with the past or the future but never the present. I aim to change that – right now.

Legacies get generated in the present. You cannot initiate them at any other time. They get created moment-by-moment and are nonstop.

When you forget and try to remove your Legacies from the present moment, they become distant - crucial but not urgent. Consequently, you ignore them to the detriment of yourself and others.

Yet Legacies are pressing, vital, and pervasive. They are not abstract concepts. They are the direct result of the sum total of your interactions, conversations, and relationships.

Even though your physical body is continuously in the present, if you stop to consider it, you find your mind rarely is. It continually flits between pondering the past and imagining the future.

It is easy to lose awareness of your breathing, the tension your body holds, or that your mind has lost focus of your present situation. It is akin to believing you are fully relaxed when you first go to bed, only to realize the tenseness you still have in your body before relaxing further and drifting off to sleep.

You get admonished to ‘just’ be present as if doing so is second nature and does not require deliberate concentration. It is as if you are doing something wrong.

However, your mind gets quickly drawn away. The whirlwind of obligations, culture, and technology demands that you be anywhere but the present. The best you can do is notice when your mind strays and do your utmost to bring it back to the present moment.

It can be confounding because being present takes noticing and responding to your heightened awareness. Through repeated practice, you can train yourself to be more mindful and make the process more consistently habitual – rinse and repeat.

The rewards of increasing your awareness and becoming present-centered more often are profound. Possibilities reveal themselves at the moment that hides when your thoughts are elsewhere, allowing you to choose from a more substantial array of options.

Conversely, your focus narrows, you become more reactionary when you are not present, and your available alternatives shrink. ?

Your body sensations and breathing are helpful markers. They both reflect and inform how we feel at a particular time. Through examination and reflection, you can determine whether past events or your future expectations are driving your feelings.

Everyday Legacy Mindsets prime you to remember that the only time you can affect anything is in the present. You cannot change the past, and you cannot reach into the future. ?

Teams and Organizations

These same truths pertain to your teams and companies. How present are your team members or company associates at any given time? What steps or processes do you have to help them work and interact in the moment?

Some companies bring mindfulness facilitators in to raise awareness of the benefits of being present and calming one’s nervous system.

The pioneering women’s fashion company, Eileen Fisher, adopted group meditation practices before every meeting.

Many of the organization’s associates routinely partake in mindfulness practices several times daily, every day, to continually bring its executives back to the present. One of a collection of creative processes that help the company maintain its reputation for cutting-edge innovation and leadership.

Our mindsets direct where we place our attention and intention at any given moment. What is true for us individually pertains to us collectively.

Everyday Legacy Mindsets provide you with the framework to live and lead with fewer regrets. None of you seek more regrets. No one does.

Worthy Considerations:

1.????Do you believe your Legacies can wait until you decide you are willing to tend to them? If so, when do you think you create your Legacies?

2.????What portion of your days do you spend present-centered? Have you taken the time to notice? What approaches draw you from the present?

3.????When you open to the moment, do you become aware of possibilities you did not notice before? How does that make you feel?

4.????Would acknowledging you live and leave your Legacies every day, in every moment, change your words and actions? Would doing so increase your responsibility for them???

5.?????What would happen in your family, team, company, or community if they adopted and integrated Everyday Legacy Mindsets? How much more resourceful, compassionate, and captivating would they be?

Please connect with me to learn how Everyday Legacy Mindsets help you consciously live and lead in the present to benefit your family, team, and organization. I welcome the conversation.?

Robert Hackman, Principal, 4C Consulting and Coaching, helps people live and lead with fewer regrets. He grows and develops leaders through executive coaching consulting, facilitation, and training of individuals, teams, and organizations. He is committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He facilitates trusting environments that promote uncommonly candid conversations. Rob is also passionate about the power of developing Legacy Mindsets and has conducted over 50 Legacy interviews with people to date.

A serious man with a dry sense of humor who loves absurdity can often be found hiking rocky elevations or making music playlists. His mixes, including Pandemic Playlists and Music About Men, can be found on Spotify.

Bravely bring your curiosity to a conversation with Rob, schedule via voice or text @ 484.800.2203 or [email protected].