Greetings!

Coming up at the end of this month is the official first weekend of summer marked by Memorial Day, celebrated May 31. Read more about the true meaning of the holiday here, and contemplate how you’ll commemorate that in your own way. This May 31 is also the 9th annual “What You Think Upon Grows” day — a holiday created to remind people to pay attention to what they are paying attention to. Or as we say in coaching “put your attention on your intention.” It’s amazing what you can create from there with a good plan.

Speaking of plans, summer is a time of travel and there’s no better place to experience the natural beauty and majesty of this planet than to visit the U.S. National Parks. Consider that as you celebrate the anniversary of the Sierra Club on May 28th. The club, first formed in 1892 with less than 200 members is a legacy in itself, and was founded by the central figure in this issue’s Legacy Story. Like travel, developing your own personal legacy is a journey and this issue outlines the steps of that journey as we’ve seen it evolve in the work we do with our Creating Legacy clients.

But before you celebrate these symbols of summer, take time to join us for a fr.ee event Supporting Women’s Greatness!! as part of our own participation in National Women’s Health Week, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Get some coaching on any aspect of your health and wellness — mind, body and spirit — that you’d like to address as we move into the northern hemisphere’s season of fun, warm-weather outdoor activities.

Keep us posted on what you’re up to, any feedback you have for us, and how we can help you be your best and do your best, so you can give your best ... and feel great about it all!

Cheers, Dolly


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The Legacy Journey

Many people ask us what our work at Creating Legacy is all about. We work primarily with successful women business owners and professionals in mid to late-career. Having accomplished many career goals, a certain level of financial mastery and perhaps a state of financial independence, they are ready to do more in the world. And they have the time and skills to do it.

We have defined legacy in a broad context that includes:

• Making a positive and lasting difference during your lifetime using your authentic interests, skills, passions and resources; while engaged in
• Legacy level living and working, which is about developing your sense of fulfillment and sufficiency
  

This all results in a sense of deep gratitude from which a sense of true generosity and beneficence can emerge, allowing you to make your biggest impact on the greater good. Women, whose natural feminine attributes of strength and passion, expressed through care and nurturing, are perfectly poised to exercise their creative nature and realize these lofty aspirations. And in doing so, you get back so much more in terms of a sense of accomplishment, pride and satisfaction beyond what money can buy. Women with children understand this sense, and women who are childfree by choice, because children are now independent or otherwise, exercise this sense because it is an integral part of the maiden-motherhood-wise woman development path.

That’s not to say money is unimportant.  It is a very useful and beneficial tool, especially when used wisely and strategically employed. We also focus on helping professional women or those who own and run their own small businesses to achieve the financial mastery necessary to move into this next phase of their own positive creativity. From there, they can then take the seven steps we’ve identified as the legacy journey.

These steps are the sections of our signature program — we’ve delivered it as a teleseminar and are working on other formats, hopefully to include a live rejuvenating retreat conducted in a lovely place. (If you have recommendations for where, please let us know!)  Understanding the steps may give you food for thought about legacy projects in general, or yours in specific and where you might be in the process.  We’ll cover them in more depth in future issues.

Step One ~ Create the Vision. This step is about finding the authentic you, by identifying what you value, articulating your deepest aspirations, knowing who you care about, and defining what you want to do and where you want to make your impact.

Step Two ~ Gather the Resources. This creative step focuses on what you already have to contribute to the project, what else you need, and who you want and need to be involved. We explore what creativity really is, and what blocks it.

Step Three ~ Begin the Design. Armed with your dreams, ideas, interests, values, identified beneficiaries, experiences, background and initial resources, this is where the creative process comes alive and begins to take some shape.

Step Four ~ Develop the Infrastructure. Whatever the size or scope of your legacy ‘project,’ this is where it begins to actually take shape. Laying a foundation to build upon begins here. The old saying ‘failing to plan is like planning to fail’ applies at this step, so we cover the basics of laying out a successful implementation plan, which becomes your roadmap or blueprint.

Step Five ~ Bring the Project to Life. Based on your definition of legacy, your dream for seeing it come to fruition, the identified resources you have and need, the design and plan, here’s where you choose the most effective structure, add strategic business development and marketing design so others know what you’re up to, and develop operational systems to keep things going consistently and sustainably.

Step Six ~ Harvest the Rewards and Keep It Going. When your legacy project is operational, you get to experience the joy seeing the difference it makes. You also get to receive the appreciation and gratitude generated by those it helps and inspires to contribute to it. Then, this step invites you to engage in succession planning so you can transition operations smoothly to others, and exit-planning so you can step away without disconnecting — playing the part you want to play as long as you want to play it, knowing your legacy will live on for generations.

Step Seven ~ Build the Bridge. Depending on where you are when you start on this legacy building journey, you may have to re-group and redefine other aspects in your life as you move into where you’re going with your project. This is best accomplished by undertaking a legacy full life plan to design your ideal life that takes into consideration what’s most important to you in the following areas Vocation, Health, Finances & Estate, Leisure, Family, Friends, Personal Development, and Community Service (the area that contains Legacy, though it’s present in all the other categories, too). How full is each section for you? If the pie chart was a wheel, how smooth or bumpy would your ride be?  

Where are you on this journey? It’s not necessarily a linear progression, but it all eventually comes together in a tangible, consciously designed personal legacy you get to live and leave on as you choose (rather than simply bequest to others at the end of your life.) 

You may be part of the way there. You certainly are in some phase of step seven. In our work, each of these steps is explored with exercises and additional resources that help you take your dreams and visions, aspirations for your full self-actualization and creative ideas for making things better in the world ... and getting them into action through very practical applications that allow them to materialize.

There is nothing more frustrating than unrealized dreams ... and nothing so satisfying as ctually seeing them come to fruition. Let us know where you are and how we can help you do just that.

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Engineer Inventor By Day Pioneers Wilderness Preservation

At age eleven, Scottish-born John Muir emigrated with his family to the United States in 1849. They settled in Wisconsin where young John became a loving observer of the rich woods. While Muir was an excellent student, he left college after three years to travel the northern United States and Canada. He learned woodworking and even invented a clock to earn money. But it was through his years of independent study, writing, self examination, wilderness exploration plus the encouragement of family, friends and mentors, that he became one of this country’s most revered American naturalists and earliest advocates of preservation of wilderness in North America.

Although Muir was an engineer and inventor, outdoor travel, writing and activism were his true legacy level areas of work. Millions have read Muir’s letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. His activism helped to save the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. He co-founded the 128 year old Sierra Club which is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States. The John Muir Trail, 211-miles long, was named in his honor. Other places that are a tribute to him are Muir Woods National Monument, Muir Beach and Muir Glacier.

For Muir, nature was both his home and theology, believing that all life was sacred. A primary aim of Muir's nature philosophy was to challenge what he called mankind's ‘enormous conceit,’ and in so doing, he moved beyond the Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, to a ‘bio-centric perspective on the world.’ He described the natural world as ‘conductor of divinity’, and his writings revealed God and universal creation in nature.

In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests. He petitioned the U.S. Congress for the National Park Bill that was passed in 1899, establishing both Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. During his life, he published over 300 articles and 12 books. The spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature in his writings inspired readers, including presidents and congressmen, to take action to help preserve large nature areas. In these ways, Muir profoundly shaped how people understand and envision their relationships with the natural world.

Muir, noted as an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and even religious prophet, is known more for his legacy development work than his income-producing work, which was a means to the end of fuller creative self-expression aimed toward making the world a better place based on natural preservation. That was from the heart and more authentic to him. To many, the legacy work Muir became known for exemplifies the archetype of our oneness with the earth.

John Muir’s legacy was a series of activities and projects taken on throughout his life. As a dreamer and activist, his eloquent words changed the way Americans saw their mountains, forests, seashores, and deserts. He not only led the efforts to protect forest areas and have some designated as national parks, but his writings gave readers a conception of the relationship between wild nature and human culture as one of humility and respect for all life.

In the months after his death, many who knew Muir closely wrote about his extraordinary influences. Several generations later, we owe him gratitude as the pioneer who helped start our system of national parks. Many other torches were lighted from his inspired enthusiasm to preserve natural beauty.

If your 'business' is how you make money, and your 'profession' is your true authentic calling — that thing you are deeply moved to do to make a positive difference — what would you take on? If they are the same, how can you do the latter in a bigger way with similar inspired enthusiasm? What would you like to be said of your contributions several generations from now?

(EBC)


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Send us an email about someone you know who is living or building a legacy. We’d love to feature their story. Maybe it’s you?!