The Why and How of Everyday Legacies (Part 3)

Right here I am starting my legacy

Planting roots

To make the best of me

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From the song 'Legacy'

By Sterling

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In part two of The Why and How of Everyday Legacies, we established that living your life with purpose generates optimism and many surprisingly positive effects.

This article delves into the second of the five P's of Everyday Legacies, Principles. Your principles are how you do things, and your purpose is why you do them.

?Everyday Legacy Mindsets move you in the direction of mattering in ways that mean most to you. Identifying, clarifying, and integrating the five P's. – Purpose, Principles, Personal, Present, and Perspectives are the building blocks of Everyday Legacy Mindsets. They are your pathway to living and leading with fewer regrets.

Legacy Mindsets raise awareness of your impact on others, your environment, and what you leave behind. You are constantly living and leaving your Legacies moment by moment.

Your influence sets off a chain reaction, affecting how others interact following their encounters with you. Acknowledging your impact is a primary effect of Everyday Legacies.?

Principles

Your principles are your most highly held values. Please be careful not to confuse them with anyone else's. You must identify and clarify your own.

Naming and claiming your values sharpens your focus on them and helps you reinforce them and embed them in you.

Principles are classified as nouns yet have no value until they are practiced. In other words, when they become verbs. Thus, it becomes crucial for you to consider your principles as verbs. Until you arrive at choice points in which you need to exercise them or not, they are only theoretical.

"It is not a value until it has cost you something."

How will you know how you honestly think and feel until you act in ways aligned with your beliefs? They have only been tested if implemented during challenging situations in which difficult choices must be made. Behaviors are more substantial than words.

You can get clear about your values only through consistently behaving in alignment with your principles, standards of behavior, and discernment of what is essential in life. Otherwise, they are aspirational ideals or what you think they are supposed to be, yet are not.

Counterintuitively, you will not confidently know your principles until you realize how badly you feel when you violate them. Living out of integrity is a surefire pathway to regret – which, if you are paying attention, you will immediately feel in your body.

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Therefore, honing in on your highest principles is an iterative, lifelong process of trial and error, transgression, and course correction.

Putting your values into practice is a vulnerable act. Brené Brown accurately describes adopting and integrating your principles into your way of being and doing as the process of living into your values.

Executives get frustrated because they are in glass houses. They cannot help but communicate. Everything leaders do and say is judged by others as to whether or not it aligns with what they have espoused.

The same is true for us. While we may not be in the proverbial fishbowl, we always know if we have defied one of our highly-held principles, regardless of whether other people notice. We know.

Practicing your principles strengthens you, and defying them diminishes you.

Teams and Organizations

Principles and purpose represent the fundamental building blocks of culture.

Some companies write their values into vision and mission statements or hang lists on their walls. They may also express them in value propositions and taglines. However, as within us individually, when they are not adhered to, they undermine trust, confidence, and credibility.

As a leader, explaining your decision-making rationale whenever possible is critical. Doing so enables others to understand how you decide. Even if they disagree, they will respect you for adhering to your principles.

Cultures built on a clear purpose and aligned principles are more exciting and compelling places to work. They draw the best from people.

Take your time and invest effort in determining your purpose and highest principles. Get feedback and help from others, knowing you must choose them yourself.

Principles and purpose represent guardrails that keep you focused on living and leaving the Everyday Legacies you want. What could be more significant than that?

Worthy Inquiries:

1.????What are the implications for you and others if you do not know your highest principles?

2.????Do you believe you, your team, and your company are more or less likely to follow your values if you name and claim them? How will you iterate them to embed them into your actions and decision-making.

3.????Can you live and lead with fewer regrets while betraying your principles? How well does that work within your teams and organizations?

4.????Are you willing to acknowledge that identifying your 'why' and 'how' infuse you, your team, and your company with greater meaning and fulfillment?

5.????How would adopting and integrating your purpose and principles contribute to your ability to live and leave the Everyday Legacies you intend – ones with fewer regrets??

Please contact me, and I will freely share some resources I use to aid in identifying and integrating your foremost principles to benefit yourself, those you love, your team, and your organization. I want to help and 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.