What Legacy Are You Leaving?

 

Most leaders, if not all, understand that your lasting impact will not be in what you do today, but in your influence that will carry into the future. This future influence is your legacy.

Bob Buford in his book, Halftime, shared the three phases we all move through: Survival, success, and significance. It is when we hit the significance phase we begin to wrestle with what we’d like to be remembered for. This is our legacy.

A legacy is not constructed when you get to your final days. Waiting until then will assure your legacy will not be what you want it to be.

Leadership expert, John Maxwell, says, “You build a legacy by choosing to do so. You choose today. You choose the legacy you want and live it out daily.” Once you make a decision regarding your legacy your behavior ought to reflect your decision.

If the legacy you want to leave is a decision, how ought this decision be made? Here are several questions to help:

What is a legacy to you?

What do you currently do that you’d like to be remembered for?
When it is all said and done, what do you want to be said about what was done?

When people reminisce about you, what do you want the memories to be?

What can you do to build a legacy that is authentically you?

What are your attitudes, actions, and attributes that you’d like to be a part of your legacy?

Who are the people in your life that you desire to genuinely leave a legacy for?

 Legacies are not built in a moment, but over a lifetime. The lifetime you build, the things that you do, the example you set each day are the building blocks of your legacy.

 

 

Source:  Facebook post in 2020 by Phil Stevenson