Greetings!

With the passing of the Summer Solstice on the 20th, the longest day of the year in North America, most of us are full swing into a buzz of activities and adventures.  We’re definitely all a flutter here! Are your activities meaningful and satisfying for you?  Are you involved in building out the dreams and ideas most important to you — maybe really getting cooking with that resolution you firmly planted for this year? 

Perhaps this is what you need to really get you going:  we’re running a Summer Special on our Overcoming Underearning & Achieving Financial Mastery program (based on the great work of Barbara Stanny with resources from other financial masters). Want to truly feel like a money master and be solidly on the road to financial independence if you’re not already? Join us. Starts July 15 — see Events below.

We want to brag on one of our 7 Steps to Creating Your Legacy program participants from last fall.  First of the year, Robin Herskowitz hit the ground running with her legacy project “Health Start”— check out her Facebook page while her website is under development, and follow @HealthStart on Twitter. The key to healthier communities is starting young. We all know that, but Robin is doing something about it!  (And we know we had a hand in accelerating her process — so we're very proud of that, and of her!) Check out what she — and the great team she’s assembled — are doing! Then let us know how we can help you!

Maybe listening to some great legacy stories will inspire you into your own legacy adventure this summer. Check out some of the audio interviews available at the Creating Legacy Studio. 

And last but not least, please check out our new Creating Legacy Network website.  It’s been revamped to showcase our 7 Steps to Creating Your Legacy program and the other great work we have to help inspire your greatness. Read and comment on a blog post or two.  We’d love to hear from you!

Cheers, Dolly

Join us on Facebook! And on Twitter: @dollygarlo and @elizabethcrouch
 

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Adventure Is Where You Find It

It’s clear from watching people develop their conscious living legacies, that they embark on a significant adventure. Similar to legacy, the very word adventure conceptually takes on many sizes, shapes, forms. People define it and express it very differently, just as they uniquely manifest their personal legacies.

So how do people think about adventure? What are their perceptions and observations related to both the word and concept? Some questions came to mind:

• How do you describe adventure? 
• What might be an adventure for you?
• Can you describe adventure with your senses? (Touch, sight, sound, smell, taste)
• How do you experience adventure? 
• What inspires you about adventure? 
  

Here are some of the insightful answers we discovered from friends and colleagues who brought full ‘body, mind, and spirit’ connections to the subject:

Carol — Is inspired by anticipation and engaging all the senses, especially the wonder of sound, motion, sight.  For her, adventure is learning to play new musical instruments, creatively designing clothing for people with special physical needs, or organizing tennis tournaments as fundraisers for local organizations. And she’ll travel anywhere, any time!

Jerilyn — Is inspired by a spiritual calling to honor her brother, plus repair and heal from previous wars through a project called Peace Trees Vietnam And sometimes, she says, adventure is as simple as creating a giant, freshly baked cinnamon roll. (Adventures can be very attractive!)

David — Is inspired by inclusion and independence; designing and creating a cooperative senior living community; or simply planting a sizeable vegetable garden each spring, anticipating how many vegetables will grow to maturity for sharing with family and neighbors. These things are closely held, personal adventures to him.

Sylvia — Is inspired by movement and cultural differences, spiritual connection and transformation through travel; adventure is simple travel and writing to inspire group travel eco-adventures. 

Anne — Is inspired by resilience and determination; her grand adventure is working with several established organizations to create homes and safety for displaced women and children.

Rob — Finds inspiration in physical and mental challenges.  They have helped shape his adventure in restoring physical mobility where it’s been traumatically taken away.  He does that through involvement with the Prosthetics Outreach Foundation. 

Vicky — Is inspired by the feeling of freedom. For her, adventure is life without routine or physical location constraints for her work

Clearly these questions and responses tell us that adventure, like beauty, ‘is in the eye of the beholder.’ There are as many unique perceptions and expressions of adventure as there are people!

Exploring the rich arena of your personal legacy development is like that.  It starts with really listening in on yourself. From there, you can tell your stories so others hear and capture them. Then, putting your beliefs, values and perspectives in action becomes a significant adventure. Developing greater satisfaction and fulfillment in life for the purpose of adding to it, is a truly adventurous way of approaching work and accomplishment ... it gets you engaged with your unique sense of need to be involved!

What inspires you so fully that it’s far beyond the ordinary or routine? What do you anticipate or experience so fully as adventure that it sets you in motion to create your enduring legacy project? We’d love to know!

(EBC)

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Turn What You Know and Love Into A Major Contribution

Mike Tuccelli, Ed.D, is a faculty member at the University of Florida. He teaches what he regards the world's most exciting foreign language: American Sign Language. And he knows from where he speaks — which fortunately he can do clearly thanks to his mother and some excellent speech therapists. You see, Tuccelli has been profoundly deaf since birth, which he knows makes learning to speak, as well as communicate generally, a real challenge.

In return for the gifts he’s been given, he is giving back ... his way. That has resulted in his amazing legacy project.

Born profoundly deaf, it took Tuccelli 3 years of speech therapy just to say one word correctly.  He did not use sign language until he was 20, and then spent 2.5 decades being a self-described “militant anti-cochlear implant Deaf person.” As an educated person, however, he did research on the track record of that medical technology, learning that sentence recognition is now up to 90% (study in 1994 showed only 0 to 8% response by pre-lingually deafened people). So, in 2005 to “walk the talk,” he went in for cochlear implant surgery which changed his life in a positive way. 

Not a stranger to challenge, Tuccelli, now 62, has been riding motorcycles since he was 14 years old when he got his first set of wheels, a 50 cc Honda.  With learner's permit, he drove it from Jacksonville to Miami and back. Still as a teenager, he drove his 150 cc Honda to California and Canada.  His 96 year old dad, Tuccelli’s role model, still rides his own 2010 Honda daily. He advised, “it is the life in your years that makes the difference” so Tuccelli decided to set a significant goal: riding to Alaska every year. And he’s determined to do it every year until he turns 100 himself.

That first ride came in 2002, and was solo because he didn’t figure anyone else would want to make the trip he planned. He rode 900-mile days and 14,000-miles total including “four corners:” Key West, FL; New Brunswick, Canada; the Arctic Circle; and Tecate, Mexico. That trip is chronicled here. During that trip, the first “World's Longest Group Motorcycle Benefit Run” was born.

He did the trip himself until 2004, when the idea to combine two of his loves — his professional arena and riding — came to fruition. Tuccelli expanded his project to include others who may have dreamed of doing a trip to Alaska, and to give them a good feeling about helping others.  In 2005, one other rider, Patrick Henry, joined him — see his photo album here. Each year since the project has grown. 

His trip planning shortened the daily jaunts, first to "easier" 500-mile days, then into today's 350-450 mile daily segments. He’s creating repeatable systems and a trip template — with places to stay or join in the ride, suggested things to do, local resources, side trips, etc. — with only two major route variations instead of a new one every year. There is a regular start date around the 3rd Saturday of July. As a result, more and more riders, even couples, are signing up! His ultimate goal now is to include 20-30 riders each year, with “reunion rides” every five years for people to come back and do it again.

As for that good feeling — beyond the personal accomplishment of the ride itself — Tuccelli gave the riders, and others, the opportunity to make a bigger contribution. He chose an organization called SKI-HI at Utah State University to be the beneficiary, and set up a pledge web page to support the organization. Make a lump sum donation or sponsor a rider — 100% of the proceeds go to SKI-HI. As a result of the systems he’s putting in place, SKI-HI will be able to participate and support each year’s ride by maintaining a web page on their site, as well, showing the schedule and providing a "matching" service for bikers to locate others or ride as groups to save lodging costs.

SKI-HI had been a part of Tuccelli’s doctoral dissertation and he was impressed with the important differences they were making in the lives of deaf babies and their families. His dissertation studied how early intervention has an impact on the language acquisition of deaf children. Deaf people comprise the "third largest 'nation' in the world," yet up to 96% of their families aren't able to communicate with them.  Without early intervention, deaf children traditionally achieve just a 3rd grade reading level by age 20. And 92% are born into all-hearing families who have no experience with deafness / hearing loss and are in vital need of information and support. The issues compound to produce a far greater impact for everyone in the family. 

SKI-HI’s work, begun in 1972, provides early intervention and early childhood programming for infants and young children, ages birth to five, with hearing and vision impairments and other disabilities. They also give parents motivation, guidance, and resources for communication, language, amplification and audiology. Tuccelli appreciates and values the focus that allows children to grow up to be happy, confident tax paying citizens rather than being on social security disability insurance, being strangers in their own homes, and being left out of society as Helen Keller so well predicted.

Tuccelli makes the entire ride an opportunity to get the word out. He’s started to attract the interest of some related businesses, involving a few as corporate sponsors, like: Ride-On Tire Sealants, which had been supplying their products to the bikers; and Pure VRS, a company that provides a way for deaf people to make phone calls through a video relay service.

Tuccelli makes himself available for presentations and TV interviews for parents of deaf children at all locations. And on the ride, there are some pretty cool locations. His goal is for the “World's Longest Group Motorcycle Benefit Run” to become a major yearly event — with a slogan that will resonate with most bikers: "Those who can ... do Alaska yearly ... those who can't, do Sturgis or Daytona Beach"...  For more information, to be a sponsor or to find out about participating in a future trip, check his incredible website or contact Mike Tuccelli at DrASL@aol.com

This story is a glorious example of how a legacy project evolves:

• from the underlying values that provide the foundation,  
• to the choice of who or what your passion seeks to benefit,
• to a vision and mission for how to create that, and then
• to the execution of the project through development of systems, participation of others, and fundraising as may be needed

Then, keeping it going for a long as possible — to your 100th birthday with your involvement, and hopefully well-beyond — can be done through proper succession and exit-planning to “make a difference that lasts for generations.”

What sparks your values, passion and vision from reading a story like this one?  Let us know how we can help you bring your project to fruition, or help you set things up so you can step away when you're ready!

(DMG)

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

 

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LOHAS Forum

We're excited that Creating Legacy Network will be participating in the LOHAS Conference in Boulder CO June 23 – 25, 2010.

LOHAS stands for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. The conference focuses on people and organizations working on health and fitness, the environment, personal development, sustainable living and social justice.

We're looking forward to presentations by an amazing array of speakers and networking with like-minded business people interested in changing the world for the better. We'll have an update for you in our next Legacy Journal!

CREATING LEGACY STUDIO

• The Studio is your opportunity to explore the concepts of legacy in your own life, work or business. We focus on how to take practical action to get a full life and fulfilling work, give your best gifts — and make a significant positive difference in an enduring way that brings you great joy.
  (Come on, you know you want to change the world ...)
• We have some great recordings posted on the Creating Legacy Studio page on BTR. Download past shows in mp3 format for listening in your preferred player.
• See more info about the Studio on the Creating Legacy Network website, where we post the updated schedule and call in information.&
• Tune in, turn on and take part!

OVERCOMING UNDEREARNING® & ACHIEVING FINANCIAL MASTERY TELESEMINAR

Announcing our newest program!! Mark your calendar — starting July 15, we will be brining you a fabulous new course based on the amazing book by Barbara Stanny.  If you don't know her work, you'll be glad you found it, and you'll want to pass it along like we do ...

It's "A 5 Step Plan To A Richer Life"!

Wealth is not what you make, it’s what you keep ... and how wisely you spend. Underearning keeps you from making what you deserve, and often from allowing true wealth to grow.

Financial Mastery is what leads to Financial Independence — where you can separate your ‘business’ from your ‘profession,’ and do work you love whether or not it provides you an income.  Are you there yet?

During this 5 week teleseminar you will:

• Learn how to dig deeper to uncover the blocks & barriers that are keeping you from reaching your goals
• Engage in intimate and eye-opening discussions with plenty of time for questions
• Come away with a personal action plan for earning the money you deserve
• Have a lot more fun in the process than you ever imagined.
• Leave with new resources to support you in creating real wealth — after all, that’s what also allows you to make a greater contribution in the world ...

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