Keep The Focus On Yourself

June 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Colleague Ruth Ann Harnisch shared some great words of wisdom recently in a post called U Do U.  She reminded me of one of my favorite book titles “What You Think of Me is None of My Business” by Terry Cole Whittaker.  It’s also one of my favorite mantras. 

It’s been a difficult one to master, for sure.  For me I think it’s because early conditioning followed by nursing, my foundational learning and career, caused me to be really confused at a young age about what “caring” means. Focusing on myself was selfish and to be avoided – until I finally learned the ‘put on your own oxygen mask first’ principle.  Clearly a depleted human has little to give, whereas one who is full to overflowing, fulfilled, has lots to contribute.  Caring from that place is a lot richer.

Lawyering – the ‘you’ve come to me because I know better than you about this matter’ training further distorted the definition into “I care, therefore I must tell you [advise] what to do.’ For the most part that worked, but it wasn’t very satisfying.  Would much rather see people empower themselves and avoid legal (and other) problems!  

Fortunately, coach training certainly helped change both those viewpoints.  There is only so much I can do to begin with.  Secondly, you’re the only one who can actually change your life – and I get to revel vicariously in your victories! I can be of service, but even in service others have to exercise some self-help and accept what you have to offer – or not.  It’s their choice always, and there’s not much I can do about their choices.  I can listen, lend support, provide ideas, and give feedback, but the choices and actions someone takes after that (as well as the consequences) are theirs alone. And I can “want for” your greatness.  Which I definitely DO!  Playing small doesn’t do you or the world much good.

So, I care about you without wanting to change you (though I’m willing to help if you want it -and it can be on your terms, not mine, I’m more than okay with that – even if I’d have chosen a different result).  I didn’t create this universe and I’m not running it, so often the result WILL be something other than what I had in mind – ah, the multitude of possibilities.  And that’s not only okay, actually it’s good.  And it reminds me that the point of power for myself is within me – how I shape my own attitudes, perceptions and choices.  What I let in and what I keep out.  True for us ALL.

And I can care what you think without feeling like it’s a mandate to change myself if you think differently or don’t agree with my choices.   But that’s not how I’ve had it wired up most of my life.  Thank God we don’t learn less.

That mantra “what you think of me is none of my business” puts it all in perspective, along with its corollary – what I think of you is none of your business.  Sounds kind of callous, but maybe it’s really the best kind of caring … What we think about is our business.  And it’s good to focus on what we’re thinking about, and what we’d prefer to be thinking about – because THAT is the place from which we create!!

How would your life be different if you kept the focus on yourself, worked on your own fulfilment, chose to be happy (as opposed to any other feeling you indulge from time to time), and gave back from a place of feeling fully contented with your life (no matter what anyone else said or did)?  If you want help with that, let me know.  I’ve been around that block and am happy to help you choose what you want from your own array of possibilities.  That orientation for service is the best way I can demonstrate I care.

Wishing you the best – however YOU define that.  Cheers, Dolly

Filed Under: Authenticity, Blog, Coaching, Living Your Best Life Tagged With: caring, Contribution, fulfillment, Keep the focus on yourself, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Self-care, Terry Cole-Whittaker

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 is Becoming A New Trend

March 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Used to be when I used the word legacy, people cocked their heads to one side like a curious puppy hearing a new command for the first time. Huh?

It gives me great joy to see the concept out from under the wraps of heads of state and philanthropists with enormous financial estates. While these folks may or may not create great legacies, it seems more and more people are stopping to consider what their lives really mean, and what difference it will make for them having been on this planet. And, oh boy, that’s where it starts.

I read a great post by a guy named Chris Guillebeau in Seattle, Washington, USA. Chris has a great take on his own legacy and his post inspired the comments of a great number of kindred legacy spirits including me. If you’re interested in these notions, you may well find it a great read too!  I couldn’t have said better what he did if I’d written it myself, and I swear I didn’t hire him to write about it. These notions of giving back and social entrepreneurship are springing up spontaneously all over the place. I am so glad to see the trend forming.

I am struck how common the concept of creating a legacy project seems to be among Gen X, Gen Y and the Millennials – even more than it is with people often of considerably greater financial means in the Boomer and beyond generations. There is a legion of humans developing on this planet with a penchant to give forward (as well as give back) and make a difference. And it is from that mindset they will find the means to get it done. You don’t have to start with a great deal of wealth or power to ‘leave a legacy.’ You just have to care about something and decide to act on it. Money can be raised to support something worthwhile.

What would you throw yourself into, whole-heartedly, that would be a joy to promote and even raise funds for if you had to because it did so much good and made you feel incredible?

Filed Under: Blog, Meaning, Personal Legacy Tagged With: Collaboration, Contribution, Generation X, Generation Y, giving forward, Leadership, Legacy, mindset

A Living Legacy of Chocolate Chip Cookies Designed To Carry On

October 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Over seventy years of chocolate chip cookies is a legacy project that most everyone can relate to.  Not seventy year old cookies, relegated to a museum.  Rather a process of serving warm, just out of the oven cookies for people to enjoy week after week over that time.

Just goes to show everyone can contribute something – and with the right planning, what lives on beyond your lifetime can simply be an extension of what was joyfully given during it.  Candace “Dacie” Moses provides us with an example of just how big even a small gift, made sustainable, can grow to be.

Dacie Moses was a librarian at the Carleton College in Northfield, MN, in the U.S., where she was awarded an honorary master of arts degree in 1969.  But her real claim to fame, both in the legacy she defined and lived, as well as what she left for future generations is the Dacie Moses House.  During her life, Dacie invited students to her house for freshly baked cookies, Sunday brunches (for up to 50 people), to hold conversations, watch TV or play the piano, snack from her refrigerator or call home from her phone.

Valuing the creation of community around warm chocolate chip cookies and conversation, Dacie did one more thing before she died in 1983 at the age of 97: in her will she donated her house to the Carleton Alumni Association.  She
instructed that it be used as it was during her lifetime – available as a hostel for students and alumni, that the upstairs apartment be rented, and that the rents received be used to maintain and improve the property.  In a separate trust, she provided funds to pay for supplies needed to make sure the freshly baked cookies remain available and to cover the cost of the Sunday brunches.

Two students still live there each year, overseeing and caring for the house, which continues to be a student and  alumni gathering place.  Her own bedroom and private bath are rented out as a hostel to Carleton visitors.  The legacy Dacie lived, lives on to benefit others.  It now even has its own website, a following on Facebook, and a video on YouTube that chronicles Dacie telling her own living legacy story.

The following tribute was written about this legacy:

“Let it (Dacie’s home) become a place of ministry, the rarest kind of ministry, a ministry not of preaching or persuasion or programming, but of simple hospitality – for this was the ministry Dacie performed over
all those long and faithful years… In the hospitable space of Dacie’s house we have always been free to be who we are without embarrassment, inadequacy or shame.” 
(from the Carleton VOICE, Vol. 46, No. 3, p.34, by Parker J. Palmer, alumni 1961)

From the conviction of her values, her joy in life and a little bit of property, Dacie Moses created a lot in her life that she consciously designed as an enduring legacy.

Doing something similar requires only that you

  • take stock – of what you value, what brings you joy and what you have to contribute,
  • develop a structure for it,
  • find and coordinate the advisors you’ll need to make it happen, and
  • get it going in a way will live on when you choose to step away. 

At Creating Legacy, we help you put that all in place.  From a local community project to a global enterprise, the difference is only a matter of scale built on your unique desires and circumstances.  Who would you like to impact, and how?  I personally take great joy in helping people make that happen.

Just what might your legacy be?

Filed Under: Blog, Legacy Stories, Positive Thoughts & Inspired Ideas Tagged With: Carleton College, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Community, Contribution, Dacie Moses, Dacie Moses House, Legacy, Planning

Passion for Life is the Stuff of Legacy

October 14, 2009 By 1 Comment

My friend and fellow blogger Jeannette recently lost her beloved husband.  Having been married only a few months now myself, but to someone who is the-love-of-my-life-like-I-had-no-idea-could-be, I can empathize with the depth of the void that loss must be. 

A consumate writer, Jeannette wrote in her Write Speak Sell blog, a tribute to her husband describing what he left in the minds and hearts, not to mention lives of others — his legacy.  It reminded me that we all have a legacy, however conscious we are of creating it, and others will be impacted by it.  And they are most profoundly impacted by the things that we do, that we do well and happily because we are most passionate about them.  Read Jeannette’s beautiful tribute here.  It’s a legacy in itself, a legacy of tribute tangibly preserved and offered to the world in a way that will benefit many who read it.

She also included a lovely blog post from Seth Godin about decision making, concluding that recognizing and exercising our power to make decisions allows us to make a bigger difference.  Very nicely stated. 

When you let the notion of legacy develop in your own consciousness, what bubbles up about it?  What does your life mean to others?  What would you like it to mean?  How might you get into action to create something tangible around your passions that will benefit others?  The world needs more of that …

Filed Under: Blog, Designing Your Legacy, Legacy Stories Tagged With: Action, Contribution, creating, Impact, Passion, Seth Godin, Write Speak Sell

It’s Good For You

August 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Research shows that approaching life from a spirit of giving and focus on making a contribution has positive health impacts including improved life-satisfaction, physical and mental health and even living longer. A great legacy created by Sir John Marks Templeton serves to demonstrate – and perpetuate – these benefits.

The name makes him sound like British royalty, and he was created a Knights Bachelor in 1987 for his philanthropic efforts. He was born in the state of Tennessee in the U.S., but lived most of his life in the Bahamas, and is probably best known as the Chartered Financial Analyst who became a billionaire by pioneering the use of globally diversified mutual funds – through his now numerous Templeton Funds for investors.

Beyond his work, however, Templeton’s great interest was in spirituality, and he built a great legacy based on it. In 1972, he established the Templeton Prize to honor individuals who make “an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works” as stated on the organization’s website. He called recipients “entrepreneurs of the spirit,” and the first prize was given in 1973 to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who received $85,000 for her charities. Based on sound management, the prize has grown to around $1.6 million annually.

To administer the prize, in 1987 Templeton established the John Templeton Foundation. It now awards around sixty million dollars every year to institutions and people for spiritual and scientific activities that explore values such as the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity – in an effort to reconcile science and religion without diminishing either. The Foundation made the prize and other grant-making activities sustainable, and though Templeton passed from this earth in 2008, his legacy is still very much alive.

In 2001, the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love was founded with a grant from the foundation. It studies unselfish love and the benefits of giving back. The institute’s most recent report “It’s Good to be Good 2009: Health and the Generous Heart” is available on the site. The report details that developing a generous way of being and then doing or giving from that state indeed has benefits for the giver.

I mention Templeton not to emphasize what someone with billions can do – most people readily get that, but think they cannot do something similar. Maybe not at the same scale, but you can do something that will be as important for the recipient of your efforts.

Rather, I provide this example to show how one person, during his lifetime, used his career and his wealth to really address the things he was passionate about. I also provide the example to demonstrate that there are funds available for all kinds of great projects to benefit people and the planet. Creating legacy is not just about disseminating wealth, but about your authentic interest and willingness to act from there. That’s the foundation from which all great legacies are built.

Filed Under: Blog, Legacy Stories, Wellness Tagged With: Action, Authenticity, Contribution, Giving, Giving back, Gratitude, Heart, John Templeton, Legacy, Love, Passion, Templeton Foundation, Templeton Prize

The Ripple Effect

August 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

One of the best things about creating a sustainable project that benefits others is the experience of what happens afterward.  All manner of people and resources show up to help with its continued development and improvement, and it grows.  It’s organic.  Just like planting an acorn sprouts into a little seedling and then over time turns into a mighty oak.

One of my other favorite images from nature that depicts this process is this one:

The picture also demonstrates the principle of precession — the effect of bodies in motion on other bodies in motion.  Getting into action sends ripples through the universe that spread out and impact other things and people.

Often those ripples come back in the form of new opportunities or information that lets you know you’re on the right track moving in the direction you’re going.  You have to attune yourself to it, but they are there and you’ll see/hear/feel them if you do.

For my own example, I often marvel at what has happened since we decided to collaborate with the Seneca County Park District to create the Garlo Heritage Nature Preserve (GHNP).

A lot had to happen to create it.  The park district had to be formed, which took a lot of steps and activities, and we had to decide on the best vehicle for conveying the property, the timing, structuring, deed restrictions and financing, tax implications, etc., etc.  Both parties had to get their own advisors and make any number of decisions, but in the end it came together.

Then others decided to follow the example an another nature preserve was formed in the park district.  Then another and another.  Grants became available and we were able to convey more land to expand the size of GHNP so equestrian trails could be added and parking for horse trailers could be built.

An article was recently published in the local newspaper, the Advertiser Tribune, online edition, showing what the original collaboration has developed into.  Going into our 10th anniversary of the original acts that created the GNHP, it is mighty gratifying to see the ripple effect that has been produced.

That all happened as a result of many people showing up to add to the original contribution with their own, to build something much greater than any of us could have done on our own.  There is great joy in that.

What act will begin your ripple effect?

Filed Under: Blog, Personal Legacy Tagged With: Collaboration, Contribution, Nature, precession