Creating Memories From Joy

Here at Creating Legacy we know that great legacies are inspired, thoughtful, heart-filled, beneficial, touching and meaningful.  They tap into the powerful human attributes every one of us possesses – of being generous, wise and creative.  So we also know they are not limited to the rich and powerful (both relative terms anyway …), they are the province of anyone who chooses to create something that others will benefit from, and remember for having been bettered somehow.  Which is a very satisfying thing to do. Thus we know that great legacies are pursued mainly by those ready to create memories from joy.

And how they deliver those memories is through the development of powerful, positive, and beneficial results to the world through a design that makes them workable, systematic, and enduring.  That’s all the “how to” we cover in our 7 Steps To Creating Your Legacy program, after we help you get in touch with your passion, desire and vision for doing so.    

But why even go there?  Because there are benefits of a great legacy – for both giver and receiver.

GREAT LEGACIES ARE MEMORABLE.  A great legacy, or its impact, is remembered.  Certainly it is remembered by whoever benefits from the project or contribution. 

You may create significant impacts everyday just by virtue of consciously choosing who you want to be and how you want to you approach others or your work – you put in a little more effort than required, you leave something a little better than you found it, you choose to pay a particular kindness to someone even if just in passing.  It truly is a conscious mindset – instead of just stepping over the piece of glass on the path, you choose to pick it up so no one else will injure themselves. 

It is from this same legacy level way of being and doing that much larger legacies are built. They are an expression of your personal values.  People notice that sort of positive or constructive action, and they remember you for it – fondly. 

Actively choosing to create a project or enterprise that similarly impacts a chosen environment or community you care about will also be remembered in an even more significant way.  What you create may affect people immediately close to you, like actual or chosen family, or even members of distant global communities, depending on the type and scope of your legacy.  Some of them you may never actually know, but they will know of you, through your legacy … and kind contribution.  And because your impact is so memorable, others may want to participate or even replicate your efforts. 

No matter what, the process of building and watching your legacy grow is something that you will remember for sure – and be glad of.  Creating your legacy, contributing the benefits only you can while you can, will prevent that sense of regret later on of the things you could have done, but didn’t – like smelling more roses or eating more ice cream, but on a grander scale.

GREAT LEGACIES ARE JOYFUL.  Legacies consciously designed to create sustainable positive benefits encompass a true sense of delight both for you, and for those who benefit. For you, that may take the form of amusement in playing with the original idea, a sense of pride for the cheer or comfort delivered to others in the process, gratitude for seeing the end result play out and the impact your work has – or all three and many others.  For the recipients of your contribution, joy may be expressed through a sense of delight, great relief, or deep appreciation for the benefit or experience they may not have otherwise had. 

Developing a legacy project can provide a true sense of awe and wonder about how the process of creation works.  The experience of being a part of something that grows and morphs into a real contribution and that attracts the attention and involvement of others, can also provide a sense of real connection with the Divine or ‘oneness with the universe,’ however you define that.  During the process, people and resources just seem to show up, experiences just seem to happen effortlessly, and you may have other special experiences that seem to tap into the greater good. 

These are special brands of happiness and well-being that are profound elements of true joy – that you can choose to cultivate.  How would you like to be remembered, or for what? Look first for those things that bring you the most joy when you think about that as your contribution.  The pride you’ll feel for actually having done it – knowing it will live on an benefit folks who may never actually know you - will far outweigh anything fame has to offer.

The elements of great legacies can be grasped and mastered by anyone, and developed in your own unique way.  What are the sparks that inspire you – that stir inside you when you take the time to entertain them? What are your good ideas, the ones you consider sharing with others – but might be a bit shy to admit? 

Yes, those.  Right there.  The ones you might be reluctant about.  They seem like really are good ideas that mean something to you, and would mean something to others, but you may question your own ability to create them.  Well grab hold of your thoughts, and at least write them down somewhere to give them their first bit of “mass.” 

You’ll be on your way to making something from nothing – exercising that innate creative ability with which all
humans are endowed. 

Great legacies don’t happen overnight.  But once you get started, you might be surprised how, stepwise, you can systematically develop your good ideas, find needed support to nurture and grow them – and how they can turn into enduring, beneficial solutions that are both memorable and exceedingly satisfying to see working in the world. 

What are you waiting for, you creative being? 

Want to know more?

  • To learn more about legacy development from inception to completion and all the different ways to create one, check out our 7 Steps to Creating Your Legacy program and join us the next time we offer it!
  • Sign up for our Creating Legacy Kit and we’ll send you our complete 14 Elements of Great Legacies complimentary e-course – and you’ll get our twice monthly Legacy Journal and updates on upcoming programs and other offerings.

Native American Wisdom on Legacy

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

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

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

What are your Memorial Day plans?

Memorial Day in the U.S. is upon us again. Thought of as the holiday that ushers in the end of school and the beginning of summer, it is so much more than that. Memorial Day is also a very special day in my family.

The holiday, originally May 30 of each year, was set aside as a day of remembrance for those who have died in the service of our country and its ideals of freedom. Congress passed the National Holiday Act of 1971, which moved the holiday to the last Monday in May and created the three-day weekend form of the holiday.  That simple change in structure caused it to shift from a day of remembrance to the official first weekend of summer fun. Some feel that diluted the focus of Memorial Day, and in their own form of legacy are making efforts to restore it to its original date.

Another Memorial Day related legacy resulted from the effort of Moina Michael. In 1915, she was inspired by a poem, and conceived the idea to wear red poppies on Memorial day in honor of those who died serving the nation during war. She wore the very first one and raised money selling poppies to benefit servicemen in need. The tradition spread with the simple creation of a simple artifact – artificial red poppies – sold to support war orphaned children and widows in France and Belgium. Later, just before Memorial Day in 1922 the Veterans of Foreign Wars began selling the artificial poppies nationally. Two years later this developed into a program to sell artificial poppies made by disabled veterans, an effort that continues today in VA Hospitals.

In another form of legacy, an organization called No Greater Love began a campaign in 1997 to create the National Moment of Remembrance. It encourages Americans to take a few brief moments from sale shopping, barbecue gatherings, and other festivities at 3 pm local time, to focus gratitude toward the patriots honored, and remember the real meaning of the holiday. These efforts by the NGL organization – formed as a nonprofit in 1971 to provide annual programs of friendship and care for those who lost a loved one in service to our country – resulted in a Congressional resolution passed in 2000.

You can support and participate in these legacies through buying and wearing a poppy, and stopping for a moment of silent thanks each Memorial Day. Work something into the plans you are making now. 

My family’s remembrance always includes an outdoor barbecue with friends, as it was the first U.S. holiday my parents celebrated after their post-WWII immigration from Eastern Europe to seek citizenship here. The bravery of those who helped them make their way through war-torn Poland and Lithuania, slave labor in Germany, and work in the resettlement camps there before reaching the freedom to live and work here, is something we always remember … and celebrate gratefully. Each person’s brave acts of contribution toward that end is a legacy in itself – allowing me to be here writing this today, and to experience of working with you.

Great legacies are often born from needs first identified through challenges and difficulties – sometimes even a mistake. An effort to make something better turns into an expanded mission and some sort of business-like structure to carry it forward.

What do you see that needs doing? How would you go about starting? Who else would you involve and what structure might it take? And, as you contemplate Memorial Day, how will you make an impact in this world in an enduring way … so it is memorable and positively affects many? 

These are all questions we can help you answer, and with those answers help you create something beneficial for which you can feel personally proud and satisfied.  And we’d love to do that!

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

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

Elegant Endurance

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

Height of Career? Time to Get Busy For Love …

Whether at the end of one successful career or in the middle of your third career, the reward is to really get busy with what you love – making the sort of contribution that working merely to create earned income doesn’t allow.  Making that sort of career transition isn’t always easy…

http://www.abajournal.com/weekly/former_paul_weiss_lawyer_is_busy_giving_away_money

Giving away money is only one way to do it - but it’s not about the money.  It’s about the effort and expending it realizes something money can’t buy.  It’s an experience available to all successful business owners and professionals. 

Our media likes to tell the stories of the ‘big splash’ with lots of dollar signs, but there are plenty of others waiting to be created … and told.

Legacy In Story

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.

What Legacy Is Your Life?

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

The Who and The What of Legacy

The term legacy most often generates thoughts of “what.”  Some tangible thing produced and left behind.  I agree that some form of asset or artifact can be very much a part of your legacy.  But more important is the “who” behind the “what.”  That’s what makes the “what” what it is!

To me, legacy is about equal parts of “beingness” and “doingness.”  What is unique about you – who and what you love, what bothers and delights you? What are your “IVANMAERS”?

The term is an abbreviation for your interests, values, abilities, natural style, motivations, activities, environments, realities and stressors.  Can you begin to clearly identify these aspects of yourself?

Knowing what they are allows you to fully appreciate your individual gifts – the ones only you can contribute in your individual way, based on the unique design of your DNA and your life circumstances.  It makes you a true power to rekon with – not in the “win, kill and conquer” sense, but in the magnificent ability to “do” that only you possess.

“A bird sings not because it has an answer, but because it has a song.”
– Chinese proverb

From that perspective, there is no competition, there is only you and what you came here capable of doing.  Will you discover yourself and do it?