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Living and Leaving Your Legacy

This is the final step in your self-assessment process. This is a time to determine how you will intentionally be living and leaving your legacy.

Legacy is what you hand down or hand over to others. It consists of the knowledge you have and share with others. It's your insights, your style, your humor, and the many things you say, have said, or do, or have done. It's how you treat people; it's how you respond to life's disruptions. Your legacy is what you are remembered for and what others think about when your name is mentioned.

Most individuals care about something and/or someone. This something or someone motivates you to behave in a certain way. Visualize the people or things that motivate you to act and consider how you want to be remembered by who or what you care about?

  • Who or what is important to you and why?

  • Whose opinion matters to you?

  • What do you want to be said about you by these individuals?

  • Has anyone helped you, or did you help someone along the way?

Age is not a factor when talking about legacy. Many people think of legacy only as what older people leave for future generations, many times in the form of money, property, or titles. Legacy has traditionally been thought of as what you are memorialized for after you have departed from this world. That notion still rings true for some and is much, much more than that.

Your legacy is dynamic and changing as you live your life. Your legacy comes in many varieties and manifests itself in numerous ways. It consists of the knowledge you have and share with others.

It's what falls in your wake and is the residue that remains because you are or were there. It's present when you are actively in, or after you have moved on from your current position.

All day, every day, you make choices that create your legacy.

Forming and living your legacy encourages you to bring your professional and personal goals into alignment. You experience less conflict and are more motivated to accomplish when your professional and personal goals are supporting each other.

Equipped with all you know about yourself, design the legacy you want to intentionally leave.

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Written by

Sylvia Gaffney, PhD