Welcome to the month of love.  It is an interesting concept and expression of feeling that can take oh! so many forms!!  One of the great things about doing this work is that from time to time people send in inspiring stories about great legacy projects they encounter. We can feel the love in the stories and in the effort people make to share them with us.  Clients and participants from our 7 Steps program check in to report their progress — work they are doing from the heart, for their love of it.  And what they are doing is amazing! It makes us very proud to be part of it — and really gratified to know the work we're doing is making a positive difference.

This issue we get to showcase a project that was sent in by a reader who was so inspired by reading our legacy stories with their examples of making a positive difference in a sustainable way, that he and a partner put together a whole proposal and sent it in.  The understanding of legacy level work, the structure of their project and the sound, business-like approach of their proposal is truly amazing work. In some small way perhaps we helped inspire it — certainly our hearts resonate with it. Maybe this story will give you some ideas on where you want to have an impact.

If you want to explore your legacy ideas, one of the best ways to do that is by participating in our upcoming 7 Steps to Creating Your Legacy program which begins on March 10 and runs for 8 Wednesdays. More information will be forthcoming, including a couple of no charge informational teleseminars where you can learn more about it all.

You could pay thousands of dollars to get the information and guidance that's packed into the 7 Steps program from separate private sources. But you’d have to run around, possibly for a number of years  trying to figure it all out yourself because no one has put all the pieces together like we have. That’s the investment we had to make to be able to bring it all together for you.  At any price point, there is no where else where you can get all this information in one place.

If you have questions, please email or call.  We'd love to hear from you.  For more great inspiration and guidance, read on ...

Cheers,

Dolly

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Places In the Heart
By Eliza Crouch

In the brevity of February, we have the opportunity to focus on maybe one of the more important aspects of legacy with thoughts of Valentine’s Day, chocolate, flowers, love and the heart!  We speak of the heart using many words, many metaphors, many breaths and many beats. We say heartfelt, heartache, heart burn, Heartsongs (an amazing legacy from young Mattie Stepanek created when he was only a young boy), take to heart, from the bottom of my heart, with all my heart and so forth.  We highly regard the heart, or so it seems…

We are encouraged, if not admonished, to protect our hearts ... how do we do that? Often these are the conversations we have with our healthcare providers about our physical heart, its health and the regularity of its rhythm and heartbeats, diet and nutrition, cholesterol levels, exercise programs, stress reduction, etc. We are given checklists, schedules and heart-fit routines to follow. But at other times, we might just need refuge, quiet time, a safe place to slow our heart rate, find calm and listen to the whispers of our heart.   

We are encouraged to open our hearts ... what does that mean? It may be the expression gratitude, relaxing with music, walks or dancing, cherishing friends and family, being vulnerable and receptive to wonderful new experiences in life.  The Yogis teach us to ‘breathe into our hearts’. Through this physical expansion, we certainly get our blood flowing. This can increase our consciousness, our self awareness and our capacity for thinking, creativity and activity. We can open our hearts in other ways too. Simply being with friends, enjoying meals with others, lending help where requested or participating in conversation stimulates the heart and spirit to open up.   

So, take heart!  Patiently explore the places in your heart where you discover what is meaningful for you, what you will create. And ... take your time. Your developing legacy is literally happening one heartbeat at a time. Consciously creating your personal legacy first requires a sustainable you! Start with yourself ... listen to the rhythm of your heart and breath.  Your wellbeing on every level is essential before you can pour your heart into creating legacy, to share the sweetness of your life and your legacy project, for generations to come! 

In your heart of hearts, what is the legacy you long to create ... to your heart’s content and delight? Where in your own life, nurturing your own heart, do you need to start before you can begin creating ...?  Who can help you make the changes your heart may desire?

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Care for the well-being of others, and helping them help themselves, is a special kind of love. So this story is especially appropriate for our "Valentine’s Issue." Mukhobeh Moses Khaukha and Nelson Obella are friends in Uganda with a desire to help people in rural communities become involved in improving their lives. Their story and their legacy project idea will no doubt cause you to look at your community needs, and what you can do, a little differently.

• obtaining support from local community leaders to mobilize the villagers, 

• recruiting young people of both genders to be “informers” and training them to deliver information from the mass media to the community — teaching them to work with people and paying them a wage,

• buying at least two newspapers daily for each informer to read to the people of his/her group, translating what he or she has read into the local language, and

• sharing television information and providing entertainment at four centers in the village where the informers interpret the programs, to include information on farming, health, environmental issues, entertainment, income-generating activities, and other subjects.

The project is structured so that each participating household will pay a small Information Service Fee weekly, in advance.  Each viewer of entertainment videos would buy a ticket. Both of these charges, outlined in their financial projections, are designed to cover the ongoing operating costs. Once the project is set up and in place, the villagers are intended to continue its operation. 

With an eye toward sustainability their project includes training programs, especially agricultural in nature, allowing the community to engage in income generating activities like poultry keeping during the year. Generating income will allow them to save money and help develop their project further, including production of their own village newspaper.

Moses is in his mid-twenties.  His efforts at devising and promoting this project with his partner Nelson are really quite amazing. This is all we know about the project, but if you have questions, want more information, or may want to help, check things out further with Moses at rufgroup95@yahoo.co.uk or on Facebook.

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Email me about someone you know who is living or building a legacy. We’d love to feature their story. Maybe it's you?!