Legacy

Legacy

In a workshop that a few of my colleagues and I were participating in recently, the facilitator asked us to write our impromptu response to this question:  What do I want my leadership legacy to be?

This is what I wrote:

‘I want to be the runway upon which others take flight.’ This is the legacy sentence I came up with a few years ago based on a Daniel Pink activity, and I’ve not yet come up with anything closer to a legacy truth than this. And when I am in practice of this—when I see flight in others, whatever that looks like for them, that I know I’ve supported in some way, I feel a literal vibration in my chest… almost like the purr of a cat. And that’s the selfish part of it—I crave that vibration.

I was having a conversation about kindness earlier, and I think there is a lot of that in this for me—what greater kindness is there than helping someone see what’s possible—that they are possible. It brings me so much joy to see others, and to make sure they see me seeing them, and I can’t imagine a more powerful legacy of leadership than this one—that I will have left behind untold numbers of souls who somehow felt a little warmer because of our time together; whose chests might have also felt that purr.

Also, I dearly love everyone in this room, and I am suddenly wondering how well and how much they know that. A legacy of leadership should also be a legacy of love… because in the end, what’s more important than that?

**

I was thinking about it again because I have been noticing, in myself and others, how the new year really can do a number on people’s self-esteem and sense of purpose. Whether you are a resolution person or not, contemplation of the year ahead can often lead to an accounting of lack; an emphasis on scarcity. What is wrong with me, physically/emotionally/spiritually/every-way-lly. What I’m not doing. What I don’t have. What I’m missing. What’s wrong.

That kind of thinking narrows and constricts. Makes us retreat into ourselves, and look at the face staring back at us in the mirror each morning with something less than love.

So how do we expand instead of constrict? How do we move toward abundance instead of scarcity?

I think that figuring out what we want our legacy to be, and then hightailing it in that direction is a pretty good place to start.

For me, it’s about igniting something in others, and it lives in love and kindness—that’s what gets the purr in my chest. But, what is it for you? What gets your chest purring? What, when you are doing it/with it/in the presence of it/in pursuit of it, makes your whole self strum with the vibration of YES?

Nigerian writer Ben Okri is quoted as saying “Our time here is magic! It's the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It's the only space.” 

Our time here is magic.

Stop focusing on what’s not. Start realizing instead just what it is that is beautiful and true.

How can you find the purr in your chest today?

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“Legacy”, The Leadership Program, 2017