Native American Wisdom on Legacy

June 21, 2010 By 2 Comments

Legacy is all about powerful, positive leadership.  It is about looking forward, thinking long-term, and creating something sustainable – not just focused on current income, but on long term value. 

I found a quote recently that aptly addresses all these considerations.  As a lawyer, I found the source to be quite remarkable, though not surprising.  While coming from an entirely different ethnic background and part of the planet, I share many Native American philosophies on living and working in harmony with our planet Earth – and in tune with what they call Great Spirit.

So what is this legacy wisdom – this significant piece of enlightened leadership?  It’s this:

“In our every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions
on the next seven generations.”
(From the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy)

How would your life and your work be different if this was your decision-making focus?  What would you be doing differently? How quickly can you shift to that mindset and make the changes you need to make? 

The world is waiting for your own exercise of real power – the power to do good while doing well, and the power to positively impact the people around you and those who follow (and who follow them, and follow them, and follow them …).  Are you up for that challenge? 

Our 7 Steps To Creating Your Legacy program has been a joy to deliver – and to watch what participants develop from there.  Keep an eye on the site to get details on how you can do something different in your work and life to incorporate this wisdom and make a positive impact on your partcular corner of this world!  Sign up for the Creating Legacy Kit (top right) and we’ll keep you posted on upcoming events.

Here’s to a better planet 7 generations from now – heck, hopefully yet during this generation!  Cheers, Dolly

Filed Under: Blog, Designing Your Legacy, Enlightened Leadership Tagged With: Decision making, Enlightened Leadership, Impact, Leadership, Legacy, Long term value, Native American, Power, Powerful, Sustainable, Wisdom

Now We’re Getting Somewhere – Introducing The B-Corp

June 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

In the business world there’s been this tension between making money and doing good.  At least for an emerging group of leaders.  Sure, making money – being a viable enterprise – is exceedingly important.  It’s hard to be an ongoing enterprise, enduring for the long-term, without effective revenue generation and cash flow management no matter how you structure things. 

But more and more there are people who eschew (love that word!) the notion that business is only about profit.  It used to be that business was not just about making money – for oneself or one’s shareholders – but also about adding value and doing something good in the world: innovating new high-quality products that last longer than one season (or one year …), building infrastructure, caring for people when they are sick or injured …

Yet, in the world of corporate law, for-profit corporate officers can run into trouble if they engage in activity designed to do anything other than produce a profit, since their duty of loyalty is to the shareholders who funded the operation in hopes of getting the greatest return on their investment.  This, of course, has led to making  money as an end unto itself.  And that focus has led to a lot of people dissatisfied with the jobs they go to every day, just to earn a buck without much in the way of personal or professional satisfaction.

Many of us in business, particularly I’m happy to say the women entrepreneurs around the world, are starting to consider that such return might come in the form of value other than a dollar, euro, ruble or yen (insert your other favorite monetery currency here).  Those who consider themselves social entrepreneurs will be glad of this first: enter the Benefit Corporation which made its debut in the state of Maryland recently.

Rather than a primary focus on ’shareholder value’ (which is creating as much money as possible for corporate owners) – the duty of those running a for profit corporation, the B Corp, like a true social enterprise, can lawfully focus on the needs of everyone connected to the company: shareholders, officers, staff, customers/clients, vendors, communities.  That’s a very different focus. So long as the public or social benefit that may serve as the mission of the enterprise is clearly stated in the corporation’s Articles of Incorporation (so investors know what that is and that their investment will not just be focused on money-making but rather value-making and money-making), then the officers and management of the company can legally seek to confer such benefits on people other than shareholders. 

Not only can they, but in doing so they must measure and report their beneficial results so that those efforts can be publically tracked.  Think of it as a hybrid of the for profit and non-profit corporation.  Click here to read an interesting example from the HuffingtonPost.com.

Seems a bit sad that we had to carve out a special legal definition for this.  But I’m glad Maryland broke ground with it. 

Actually, their law is based on the work of non-profit B Lab, a Pennsylvania company that certifies companies committed to social responsibility.  They provide an Impact Assessment for those who aspire to run socially responsible operations, help them save money and raise capital, and give them a forum to meet other kindred spirits in business. 

Jay Coen Gilbert, one of the co-founders of B Lab, feels there are more and more investors who want to invest their money in truly mission-driven companies.  He was quoted in Bloomberg-Businessweek recently saying: “I think it’s becoming increasingly not only acceptable but sought after by mainstream investors.”

That’s some good news for a change, eh?

Might your legacy project fit into a B-corp structure?  Seems like a good option for many who might need to raise capital to get their project going rather than having to rely on raising charitable donations.  We look forward to watching the development and stand ready to help you figure it all out.

Cheers, Dolly

Filed Under: Blog, Business Mastery, Designing Your Legacy, Enlightened Leadership Tagged With: Add Value, B-Lab, Benefit Corporation, Business, Nonprofit, Social Entrepreneur, Social Responsibility

Protecting Our Future

May 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The children are our future, the popular song tells us.  But as the fabulous Riane Eisler so accurately points out, why then do we pay our child care workers less than $10 per hour?  Where are our values really? Because that is where our money goes.  And isn’t it so often that our money goes out to pay for convenience? 

The pride of do it yourself, of crafting something by hand, and of eschewing waste with re-use, refurbishing or re-purposing has gone out the window with do more faster and even better, have someone else do it for you.  With just about everything.  When was the last time you grew your own food or churned your own butter – like so many did not too many generations ago?  When was the last time you bought your food from someone who still does these things, as opposed to from a more convenient factory farm to big box store arrangement …?  Heck, when was the last time you cooked your own meal — from scratch without opening any pre-mixed packages?

Two words come to my mind whenever I think about the future: clean and renewable.  Of course, I speak of energy production because it is the one thing behind our culture of convenience that seems the most at odds with my version of the future as an environmental activist – a truly healthy planet.  What if we all valued that a bit more and were a bit more concerned about how healthy the planet is that we WILL be leaving our children? 

How would what you do have to change?  Because it WILL take all of us.  This isn’t just about the utility companies or the government making decisions and changes to better our lives.  After all folks, we are the government and we are the utility companies as well as all the other businesses we patronize.  As Walt Kelly put it so well: “We have met the enemy … and he is us.”

How’s that you say?  Well, at least here in the U.S., we have the right and opportunity to vote the bozos in or vote the bozos out – or participate as one of them by being involved in government at any level.  That includes everything from writing to or calling your local, state and federal representatives all the way to, if you were born here, being the president (otherwise, the governor of some great state).  Isn’t that what we teach our children – that you, too, dear Johnny or Jayne, can grow up to be president of these United States? 

And you know that “market” they are always talking about?  Right again – that’s us, too.  We can vote with our dollars.  Instead of getting the lowest prices for the most amount of stuff, how about we cut back a little and maybe pay a little more for one or two items of higher quality: organic produce or fair trade clothing made from natural fibers not produced in some sweat shop overseas?  Can you say more with less?  And then how about using and reusing those items and making them go as far as we possibly can before they become disposable? Or even running our businesses in a more socially responsible way …?

(I’m thinking here of my dear husband, whose brimmed cotton canvas bucket hats become compass covers – he works on boats – when they no longer protect his lovely cranium … and then the shreds of what’s left of that natural cotton can be recycled.)

In my mind, we’ll have to gear up considerably to begin mastering alternative energy production methods that are, well … clean and renewable.  But I for one, think we are up to the task.  We, the voters and the market.  We will have to return to playing the role of citizens and conservationists, rather than consumers.  We have plenty of history and plenty of role models to teach us how … and we have technology to help.  At least until the oil runs out (if we don’t do something soon about that because we are really fouling this beautiful planet with what remains of the remains of dead dinosaurs).

If greenhouse gases – like auto exhaust and that from factory smoke stacks full of carbon dioxide and all the other chemicals we spew into the atmosphere – were a color rather than invisible, I think more people would notice and be appalled.  Hey, what if it looked like what’s spewing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and killing the marine life that will end up in our food chain?  (Oh, and not to leave out the children … their food chain too, since these toxics persist and are multiplied as big fish and big bird eat little fish …)

Well, if you’ve got the picture now … here’s the good news.

We can return quickly to being citizens and conservationists - proud contributors and preservationists – with just a little added consciousness (and conscientiousness).  Along with clean and renewable, I’d simply ask that you add these words to your daily vocabulary as you exercise greater awareness about every thought and every action you take, every moment of every day.  I full well know that while simple, this level of consciousness is not easy to master in practice.  So that’s why it becomes a practice. And that practice can become a movement.

While they may sound like small things, even seemingly insignificant (“who am I, I’m just one little guy”), these things all add up.  Shifting to this way of being and doing is actually a BIG job if you’ve ever tried it.  None of us will be perfect at it, but if you do it best as you can each step of the way with your life and work, and all the other people in government and industry do it best as they can each step of the way in their lives and work, or at least enough of us get it going so others can catch on and join in, then things can change significantly for the better.  And quickly … exponentially.

Then, if we use the intelligence and technology we have to focus on the production of clean and renewable energy sources, then we can be living in harmony with the planet thereby truly protecting our future.  (And no, nuclear is not among them until we can get beyond nuclear fission to nuclear fusion … and I think we can, eventually, if we’re consciously focused on that … but that’s much longer term, down the line.)

We’re at a point in a new era where this shift can happen.  It must happen.  As aptly noted recently by Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, at the EEPC India, Export Award Presentation Function, we did not leave the stone age because we ran out of stones …

Another great quote further illustrates:

“Memo to oil apologists: When VHS supplanted Betamax, nobody shed a tear.  When word processing software replaced typewriters, nobody shrieked about a socialist revolution in the steno pool.  And when the jet engine replaced the propeller, there were no protests on the Mall in Washington about a vast supersonic conspiracy. Face it: Technology changes.  And the petroleum-based economy is dead. It’s built on antiquated technology that’s killing us and our planet.  Oil has served its purpose.  It was great while it lasted, at it got us to a point where we have the industrial and technological wherewhithal to chart a new course.  But we’re no longer primitives who need animal fat to light our evening meditations, or chase away evil spirits.”  ~ Martin Luz in HuffingtonPost.com

Indeed, the universe has been beautifully set up for us humans by putting the biggest nuclear reactor we’ll ever need perfectly positioned at the center of our solar system, which in my humble opinion at about 93,000 million miles away, is about as close to nuclear technology as we humans need to be at this stage in our evolution.  But beautifully, that sun-reactor shines on this planet all day every day.  All we have to do is rotate around and collect it, store it and share it. And the rotating is already being done for us! (Think about how big that part of the job would be if we had to do it …)

With the brilliant minds of our leaders in technology and elsewhere, this is totally doable.  Just ask the children who draw pictures of this concept every day in grade schools around the world, and who are learning how to play nicely in the sandbox with others and to share their toys (then pass them down to the younger kids …).  That sunshine is in everything we know as life that is on the planet today.  It is begging us to be more consciously engaged with it.

And so is the earth.  Since we cannot see the dinofuels we’ve gassified and put into the atmosphere, it is now giving us a glimpse of what we’re doing by pumping millions of gallons of pure black crude into our oceans (and we have underwater cameras so we can watch it happen with full awareness).  I say oceans rather that Gulf of Mexico here because in their fluid state, the tar balls that have been put into circulation can now go everywhere on the planet to be cleaned up by everyone – after we focus on the massive efforts needed currently on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

What’s one thing you can do each day to make a positive difference and help return us to a world that’s clean and renewable?  Whatever you do will be your contribution to protecting our future.  And whatever it is, it is a valuable contribution.

Blessings for your efforts, Dolly

Filed Under: Blog, Enlightened Leadership, Living Your Best Life, Spirituality Tagged With: Alternative Energy Production, Change, Clean and Renewable Energy, consciousness, Deepwater Horizon, Environmental Protection, Huffington Post, Make a Positive Difference, Maldives, President Mohamed Nasheed, Riane Eisler, Stone Age, values

Neuroscience Sheds New Light on Women’s Leadership Skills

May 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Okay ladies, when you’re stressed, rather than fight or flee would you prefer to throw a potluck?  There’s good reason for that – and it’s a good thing!  It’s a hardwired feminine trait, genetically speaking. 

Melissa Kaplan’s lovely posting on Chronic Neuroimmune Diseases sheds some light on how we’re different (we knew that) and why it’s important that we band together:

“Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women.”

Those connections may just be how we can make a bigger impact in changing the world for the better.  So what to do?  Here are some thoughts:

  • Make time to spend with your women friends.  Yes, work, children and significant others, the garden, the dishes, the laundry … are important.  But they can usually wait.  Put your oxygen mask on first so you have the bandwidth to tend to them – or better yet, give them your best.  Your women friends are your oxygen mask.
  • Collaborate on projects with women colleagues.  It may still be a man’s world in many arenas, but it’s how we work best.  Working together is not cheating, like it was considered when taking tests in school.  This is the real world and cooperative skills are important.  Synergy cannot occur without combination.
  • Support and promote one another.  Help a woman colleague working toward a promotion, running for office, needing backup so she can get a project finished.  Ask that she help you with something – odds are at least 50-50 that she will, probably greater. (Chances she will if you don’t ask hover around zero – she’s busy, too, and how would she know?)  Then you’ll both feel better and be further along.

The Huffington Post indicates that some women are not only approaching, but surpassing men’s salaries in the big corporate world, according to research from Bloomberg News compiled from proxy reports.  That’s a great start, And I’m personally glad there are women willing to compete hard to win the seats historically held by men.  They certainly are capable … and braver and more persistent than I am.  But many, many more of us are out there in the trenches, or in our own businesses, and we’d all do better and feel better if we got more support … and had more potluck dinners. 

A rising tide raises all boats, as they say.  And as our boats collectively float upward on that tide, we can do more good in the world … leaving even more significant legacies.

What ideas do you have about how you can help a sister, and maybe even the planet and in turn the progeny we’ll never meet?  Would love your comments here!

Filed Under: Blog, Enlightened Leadership, Positive Thoughts & Inspired Ideas Tagged With: Bloomberg, Collaboration, Feminine, Friends, Huffington Post, Make an Impact, Neuroscience, UCLA study, Women

Legal Profession Look Out! A Change is A-Comin’!

May 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A great legacy has been born, and I’m proud to be able to announce it!  J. Kim Wright’s book “Lawyers As Peacemakers” has been published by the American Bar Association and is now available.  We also did a fabulous Creating Legacy Studio interview with Kim, about her legacy journey to this point – “A Legal Rebel’s Legacy Story” – and a recording of it is available for download on The Studio program site.

I’ve been on this journey with Kim since just after the turn of the new millenium (can you say Y2K?) – actually a lot longer than that, only I didn’t know her.  We were both restless and somewhat disillusioned with the legal profession.  Okay, not so much the profession, or even lawyers themselves, but the system within which we all had to practice.  We (and it turns out a number of others) felt there had to be a better way to use the law to serve clients and help make their lives and businesses better.  So we started making stuff up, borrowing from other traditions and professions, and fitting these new approaches into the structure of the law.

Yeah, they were teaching negotiation techniques when I went through law school.  And mediation – facilitated negotiation providing parties assistance to resolve their own disputes without a third party making the decision for them – was coming on the scene.  (This dates me, I know, since most post- college age people have at least heard of mediation and have some sense for what it is – thank God.)

But many of us longed for more civility and more constructive … yes, well, healing, approaches to legal problems.  Why should the health care and spiritual professions be the only ones to heal with their work? 

The information age being what it was back when Y2K posed what turned out to be not so much threat and disaster as hype (oh and the media has gotten better with the latter since then hasn’t it?  But I digress …), the powers that be put me together with Kim Wright and it’s been a totally kindred legal experience ever since.  I was retiring from law practice then, to pursue the more developmental and creative sides of what I did with clients - help them prevent legal intrusions, have successful businesses and happy lives, and even make things better in the world.  And Kim was, dare I say, hell-bent on improving the way law is practiced: the entire profession.

As a legacy story, this book publication has all the great elements:  Kim discovered her passion and interests, knew who she wanted to serve and benefit, figured out a structure that worked for her and has now created a number of artifacts that will persist in producing social good – this book being one of many others and no doubt some to come.  And she did it all on a shoe-string with her guts and grit and determination and heart.  For her efforts she has already been recognized as one of the ABA’s Legal Rebels for 2009.

Who says a great legacy requires a large financial estate? Even with that, it still takes the underlying guts and grit and determination and heart first – to persist and pursue and bring something beneficial to life.

In the 528 pages of  “Lawyers as Peacemakers” Kim provides the reader with the first comprehensive look at the myriad approaches talented and caring lawyers have developed to do just what we were dreaming about when we met.  If she hasn’t personally met and interviewed all the pioneers in this movement to tell the stories of how they work together, heal and bring peace to conflict and discord, she knows 99% of them.  And she is their — our — champion. Heck, she’s a champion for the entire legal profession and the people it serves – with her help in a more therapeutic way. It is my fervent hope that her impact is huge – even while I recognize how hard it is to turn a ship as large as an entire profession.  Even a few degrees on the trim tab, like Kim has made, can make a big difference.

Kim tells me that while writing the book she gathered enough additional information to write a follow up companion to it and not repeat anything she talks about in Lawyers As Peacemakers.  I hope it will soon follow her magnificaent first book! 

May the positive change continue as others get on board.  Cheers, Dolly

Filed Under: Blog, Designing Your Legacy, Enlightened Leadership, Legacy Stories Tagged With: American Bar Association, Heart, Impact, J. Kim Wright, Law, Lawyers as Peacemakers, Legacy, Make a Difference, Social Good

Increasing The Power of Feminine Energy on the Planet

May 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

There is an amazing legacy project that starts today and runs for the next week – that you can access from the comfort of your home.  It’s called the Inspiring Women Summit.

The Summit is directed toward women for sure – as the primary demonstrators of feminine energies on the planet - in an effort to support them in greater use of the power of the feminine viewpoint and approach in the world.  And we here at Creating Legacy support that, because we want to see the power of the feminine viewpoint get stronger in terms of the way the world works.  Cultivating and nurturing a culture of contribution – living a legacy approach to life – certainly embodies that. 

However, while the word feminine – just check the dictionary – is most often defined with sex and gender characteristics, feminine and masculine (for that matter) are gender neutral terms.  Each of us possesses both feminine and masculine traits.  A great comparison of those qualities is available here (you may have to adjust the items under the proper columns depending on how it shows up on your computer, but you can download the Google version into Word). 

It is really how culture and sex role stereotypes have influenced you that will determine how comfortable you will be with expressing the feminine or masculine qualities you have access to.  And the context you are operating in will also be an influence – or a challenge to rise above and choose to use a different tool than the expected.

When I was training to be and practicing as a Registered Nurse, most nurses were female.  Not all.  But despite the highly scientific and technical aspects of the nursing profession, the fact that it was founded on caring put it squarely in the feminine domain and thus only a few strong guys were attracted to it.  That is not so true anymore.

Unlike my female predecessors and pioneers in the law, who may have been one of 5-10% of women in their law school classes, when I went through law school, my class was about 30% female.  Today, in both medicine and law – both previously the provinces of men – women make up about 50% of the graduating classes.  The focus on reading, research, writing, oratory and advocacy skills that make up legal education are clearly “something girls can do” … well, and thus do well in practice, too.  But historically, culturally, lawyers were men – not because women were not capable.  Even the skill sets of the law might be considered feminine in nature when compared with the hard physical labor of construction or combat jobs …

I’ve had two previous careers that gave me a lot of opportunity to consider the difference between a feminine and masculine approach to the subject matter and related tasks of the work.  I’ve seen males take a feminine approach to aspects of the work, and I’ve certainly seen (especially in law practice) females do their best to take on a masculine approach to the work – often thinking that is what they had to do to ‘compete’ in the workplace or the courtroom.

Well, it’s not true.  Either gender can use, hopefully the best of, the feminine or masculine energies in approach to their work.  What’s great about the Inspiring Women Summit is that we’ll get a chance to explore more of the feminine approach - as well as how women can emerge as stronger leaders in the world.  In my view, it’s certainly time in history for a greater emphasis on the feminine, from everyone.  And no, I’m not trying to be emasculating as some in the culture might suggest.  I’ll be the first to take on and use masculine energies when I need to.  It’s just that I know the difference … have a more varied toolbox perhaps than folks who insist on sticking with rigid sex role stereotypes. 

I have my parents to thank for this.  They taught me that I could do whatever I wanted to do based on merit, not on gender.

I wonder how clear these distinctions are for the generation of women who follow mine.  At the baby end of the baby boom and the leading edge of Generation X, I know the struggles of my predecessor women professionals and business owners - the trail blazers – that allowed me to be more of a pioneer with my work, discovering, designing, and building new approaches as opposed to just getting a foothold.  How do the women who come after view their power (‘ability to do’) to take on the important work they have in life and then make amazing contributions they have to make?  And their role – if not trail blazer or pioneer, how do we best characterize what they are up to?

Would love to hear your thoughts on that.  Cheers, Dolly

Filed Under: Blog, Coaching, Enlightened Leadership, Legacy Stories, Life Balance/Harmony Among Life Arenas Tagged With: Baby Boom, Culture, Feminine, Feminine and Masculine Qualities, Generation X, Inspiring Women Summit, Law, Legacy, Medicine, Nursing, Registered Nurse, Sex role stereotypes, Women

Elegant Endurance

April 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

So far we’ve talked about a legacy project starting with an idea and as it takes on mass, it grows. Included in that growth is a definition of the roles and processes it takes to become a reality so the project can unfold smoothly, deliver its benefits and then others can carry it on without your direct involvement. In that way …

Great Legacies Are Enduring. The project takes shape and each aspect of it is developed with an identifiable and replicable method – a system that others can learn, teach to many others and have any important course corrections along the way. Your legacy begins to take on a life of its own.

Part of the process is to build a network around you.  Others who are moved by your project want to be involved, ususally in a very collaborative way too. From there, it can develop exponentially. The money needed to build it appears, either because you can contribute it or because funding is available from others – or both. Professional services needed to expand the project are identified (and may even be contributed).

The other people who show up to help operate it and carry it on will also allow you to let go. You can step away, knowing it will continue as designed, to accomplish its defined mission and create a benefit for the intended recipients that can last for many future generations. 

Templates, and tons of existing resources, exist to help you create your legacy. Starting with only your passion, your good and beneficial idea can be developed using time-tested structures and methods that allow you to get it started, involve others in a systematic way, stay involved as long as you like and then step aside to allow it to continue to make a positive enduring difference in the world.

Add the following to your Legacy Notebook under “Element 12 – Enduring”:

  • Is there a template out there – another individual and/or their existing organization or business operation – that is doing the sort of thing you’d like your project to do?
  • Or is there someone else or an organization that’s doing something completely different, but whose process could be applied to get the sort of results you’d like to bring about?
  • Write down the ones that come to mind, and as you notice more, jot them down here, too.

Here’s to your best life…
Cheers!

Dolly and Eliza

Filed Under: Blog, Designing Your Legacy, Enlightened Leadership, Personal Legacy, Purpose Tagged With: Collaboration, Contribution, create, creating, enduring, Enlightened Leadership, future generations, Legacy, legacy project, living legacy, Women

Legacy In Story

March 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Remember last year’s Clint Eastwood movie, Gran Torino?  It is a story about the clash of deeply held cultures and beliefs, and about the common values of life that unite us all.  The story itself is one of legacy, as is Mr. Eastwood’s lifetime of work.

For whatever else it depicts, Gran Torino focuses in on how we impact others, how we are called upon to create that impact, whether or not we respond to the call, and what we leave behind to benefit them (that is uniquely ours to give) when we discover and feel called to give it.  The story is as powerful an example of legacy in development as any I can think of.  I wasn’t so crazy about the ending, but for purposes of the movie, it fit.

I was especially moved by an excerpt from the lyrics of the title song:

Your world
Is nothing more
Than all
The tiny things
You’ve left
Behind

So tenderly
Your story is
Nothing more
Than what you see
Or
What you’ve done
Or will become
Standing strong
Do you belong
In your skin
Just wondering

And I am wondering the same.  Do you belong in your skin?  Are you comfortable there?  Are you truly exercising your unique gifts and giving back from there to make the world, your little corner of it, a better place?

We have each been endowed with gifts and talents that we are especially good at, that may well be easy for us, and even enjoyable – that can also benefit others. Will you tap into the pure joy and personal meaning that comes with doing what’s easy and enjoyable for you … for others? It doesn’t take hard work to help others, just good work – the kind you’re ready and willing to do.  Will you grow into and become those attributes and consciously leave behind those tiny things that you can, or maybe even something more? Are you contributing to life in the ways only you are able?

Start by recognizing today all you are good at and all you are grateful for … then build from there.

Filed Under: Blog, Legacy Stories, Meaning, Personal Legacy, Positive Thoughts & Inspired Ideas Tagged With: Legacy, legacy in story, life impact, s, story, values

What Legacy Is Your Life?

March 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

We’re often asked when the notion of legacy first came to us.  Dolly certainly learned the term while studying the law of estates and trusts, an offshoot of the law of property.  Working in medicine for so many years, I thought much of legacy was about healthy living during a lifetime and being in service. Both of us thought legacy always seemed like so much more than a person’s real and personal property, land, buildings, money, watches, jewelry, art collections, farm equipment, etc., etc. …

When Dolly was practicing law in Austin, Texas, she was often appointed as attorney ad litem in probate cases to represent and protect the rights of the unknown heirs of a person who died “intestate” – without a will.  Such people either didn’t know about writing a will or must have felt that they didn’t own enough property it.

Note to self:  if you are reading this now, you probably own enough property to warrant writing a will.  If you have a computer, you quite likely have a checking account, maybe even a savings and some investment accounts and credit cards.  You may also have other things that are legally titled in your name like vehicles and a house or some land.  Your heirs, the people entitled to that property by law at your death, will have to go through a whole lotta rigamarole in court, known as a probate proceeding, to be able to do anything with the stuff that is in your name if you don’t leave written instructions in a will.  Once the will gets proven up as legal in court (probated), it can be “administered” and things can be handled and distributed according to your wishes under court supervision. (Preferably leave instructions in a trust document that allows you to avoid the court proceedings for the most part, so things can be handled privately — and hire a good lawyer to help with all this because this blog post is probably as far from legal advice as you can get).

But I digress from Dolly’s original thoughts and message …

Back to the unknown heirs.  Dolly never intended to practice probate or estate law.  On top of that, she was now in the position of practicing law where her clients were people no one was sure existed or could find.  So her first task was to find her clients. Then the property to be distributed under the law of intestate succession (who gets what when there is no will) – often a home and/or a vehicle or two – could be given to the people who were expecting to get it.

Occasionally she would actually find some long lost relative. Often is was a child born from a relationship the deceased had that no one (often including the child) knew about – a half-sibling to the heirs who got to meet through this strange courtroom process – so the property could be divided up and distributed properly.

Even in cases where there was not much property, Dolly tells me she remembers being  so surprised during the investigation by how the deceased person was remembered.  Often, it was quite fondly for some small act of kindness they had done, a contribution they had made in the way they participated in their community, something they had built, or even some small but pertinent piece of advice and support they’d given along the way.  It wasn’t about their stuff.  That was the least of it – and yet, what this whole probate process was making the biggest deal about.

In every case, someone was remembered for something beyond their worldly goods.  They were remembered for who they were — what their life was really about.

All this started Dolly wondering how amazing the world might be if people consciously thought about who they are and what contribution they have to make to others.  What if they sized up their own strengths, talents and gifts, and consciously decided to make a positive difference, to seek to be remembered for good rather than for purposes of fame or power? 

The unique assets of each person, which might well include their property, could be used to benefit others, and they would get to hear about how they’d made a difference and be appreciated for it during their lifetime.  In turn, that gift of thanks would create a real sense of joy and fulfillment that would produce a self-perpetuating desire to do more, because it feels good not because there is some remuneration or vast dollar amount in it.  Hmmm, can you just hear John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’ playing in the background …

Thinking about legacy as your life, rather than your stuff, seems to us to be the larger notion of what a legacy truly is.

*How would you be engaged in life differently from that perspective?
*What would you start doing or stop doing or become involved in right now?
*Who would you reach out to? What are you waiting for?

Interesting food for thought.  What say you about your life and your legacy?

Cheers!  Dolly and Eliza

Filed Under: Blog, Designing Your Legacy, Life Design, Meaning, Personal Legacy, Positive Thoughts & Inspired Ideas, Purpose Tagged With: choice, heirs, Imagine, legal property, living legacy, probate, wills

Innovation As Legacy

March 11, 2010 By 2 Comments

PBS has amazing programs!  We all really need to watch that channel more often!

In celebration of being on the air 30 years, PBS through its Nightly Business Report (NBR) program,  collaborated (one of my favorite words!) with the Wharton School of business at University of Pennsylvania and its Knowledge@Wharton website on innovation and entrepreneurship.  Their goal: to identify the 30 innovations that have changed life most dramatically during the past 30 years.

The resulting program, the Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years, is also featured on both the Wharton and PBS websites.   NBR program viewers in over 250 markets across the U.S. and Knowledge@Wharton readers from around the world submitted some 1200 suggestions for the best innovations they thought had shaped the world in that time.  A panel of eight judges from Wharton selected the top 30.  A fascinating list to check out — true legacies all.

This got me to thinking about my favorite teacher R. Buckminster Fuller, the man who coined the term “Spaceship Earth” and the phrase ”doing more with less.”  He encouraged people to create artifacts – very much a personal legacy concept.

Bucky’s stated intention – as a lifelong experiment with his own life, made as a conscious decision in his early 30’s - was “to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone.”

He answered the question of why there were humans in the universe, with the notion that we are basically local information gatherers and problem solvers.  While we are more complex than that, it is an accurate observation.

Bucky focused his life on solving complex problems through an approach he called “comprehensive anticipatory design science.” The approach emphasized individual initiative and integrity, whole systems thinking, scientific rigor and faithful reliance on nature’s underlying principles.

He thought it was not helpful to try to change people, but rather important to change the context in which they operate, by providing innovative solutions to the problems they face.  That way, ultimately no one would have to work to ‘earn a living’ (we are, after all, already alive), but we would each contribute what we’re good at to positively impact the world around us: gathering information about and solving the problems that presented themselves uniquely to us.

What if we did more of that?  What if you took a look at what you do well and easily and even take joy in doing, and looked around to see who you could assist by creating something that would benefit them in some way?

If your brain is already spinning with ideas, you are developing a legacy consciousness.  Building anything from that thinking would make the planet a bit better place.

If what you build happens to answer Bucky’s urgent call for a design science revolution to make the world work for all.  If it:

  • “emphasizes a new design, material, process, service, tool, technology, or any combination”
  • “is part of an integrated strategy dealing with key social, economic, environmental, and cultural issues”
  • “present[s] a bold, visionary, tangible initiative that is focused on a well-defined need of critical importance [and is]
  • regionally specific yet globally applicable, and backed up by a solid plan and the capability to move the solution forward”

Then you might even win the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, as stated on the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s (bfi.org) website.

My ultimate joy at Creating Legacy would be to work side by side with you in helping you do just that, or even some fraction of that, which, in your own unique way “makes a difference now that lasts for generations.”

I’d love to hear your ideas.

Filed Under: Blog, Designing Your Legacy, Enlightened Leadership, Legacy Stories, Personal Legacy Tagged With: Buckminster Fuller Challenge, Collaboration, consciousness, Enlightened Leadership, entrepreneurship, Impact, innovation, PBS, problem solving, Significance, visionary, Wharton School of Business
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