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Legacies - it's only human to want to leave a legacy!

What small things am I doing right now that are going to make a difference in the world in the future?

I’m often discussing legacy with clients – the concept of “what we think we’re leaving behind”. Even if the clients are still young and working, legacy is a very strong human desire.  We need to know that we will be remembered and that we matter – now and into the future.

(Remember too that even if we have children, we can’t just rely on outsourcing our legacy for them to complete – that’s not fair on them or on you!)

Often the direction of legacy planning focuses most on our work and perhaps that’s because of the financial implications of work? So for a more general life-legacy route – I’ve created some questions below to consider. And remember that even if leaving a legacy feels like something a long way off in the future – it can contribute a lot to our happiness in the here and now,

The ripples of legacy:

Consider all the ripples in a lake – some may be small, but some go on to create waves that transform the shoreline.  ALL ripples have an effect, whether they gently change the flow of water, or sloosh up and wash the shore, or carry food to the beak of a wading bird, or bring more surface area to the water so more oxygen can get in.  

Legacy creation styles include:

  • Incidental
  • In-community
  • Influential
  • Intentional

1) Incidental:  If you imagine your day-to-day actions as a pebble dropped into a lake.  Now take a 360 degree view, how might these impact on the whole of nature?  (eg: you may work with someone that might save a life, or you may simply make their day more pleasant which might mean that they say a kind word to someone else, which goes on to save a life.  You may never even know what happens next).  Rise up above the lake in your mind, to get a clearer view.

2) In a community: As part of something bigger.  Those same ripples can connect with other ripples.  (Eg: what impacts us isn’t always one thing, but it could be many joined up things, and being part of this can make a huge difference).  Where are you joining up with other “ripple makers” and how are your ripples enhancing or even neutralising others, to make the world a better place?

3) Influential:  Who do you know that you can influence to make a difference? Where do your ripples influence?  Who can you influence to make similar ripples?

4) Intentional:  This is like dropping a much larger stone or rock into the lake!  Consider the longer term impact of that stone.  What do you want to leave that is sustainable, for example planting a tree or trees, renovating an ancient property, writing a book, setting up a reading initiative for children, creating art, etc.

Acknowledging your legacies:

By now you should have a clearer idea of the sorts of legacy you can leave, and enjoy leaving. But what will you do to remember each ripple?  After all you can hardly set up a statue to celebrate each one.

Ideas to acknowledge legacy include:

  • Journaling
  • Review
  • Board
  • Planning
  • Celebrate

Legacy Journaling (we’ve all done gratitude journaling, this one is about paying it forward.  What have I done today that will leave a legacy to the future).  It may be to smile at a stranger? It could be to support someone to leave an abusive relationship.  Whatever it is, note it down.

File the data:  keep any emails or letters, notelets or comments that others make to you.  The kind email saying “you made my day better”.  Print them out, hold them in your journal or a folder.

Legacy Review.  As part of your journaling, plan in a monthly ritual to go through those legacy moments. 

Legacy board.  Like a vision board, create a random board with cuttings and art, clippings from magazines, colourful images that speak to you and that explain the legacies in a more abstract form.

Legacy planning You could use the same journal to plan out what you’re going to do in the future. Once decided – book these things into your diary.  Create the plan on how you can make these things happen.  Identify whether they are influence or community based.  By their very nature they will be intentional, so how big a stone or rock … or even boulder – are you going to use?

Celebrate: Treat yourself to something to celebrate what you have achieved. It may be that you give yourself the afternoon off and take a walk in nature, or indulge in a coffee in your favourite space, or take off on a trip or holiday. Celebrate the achievements and legacy you are leaving, and this will both be fun, and replenish you to do more good work.

Helping others with their legacies

And of course remember that everyone else is out there creating their own legacies whether they know this or not.  So contribute to their legacies by letting them know the difference they have made to you.  A “thank you” goes a long way – and it’s a part of the cycle of life/legacy that makes us all smile a bit more.

Got any more legacy ideas? Please let me know.

And, if you want to look at more specific work legacy, here’s a useful link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2015/08/12/how-to-leave-a-legacy-where-you-work/

Stress management 7-11 breathing

7-11 breathing: and relax.

Mindfulness is all in the news and has been for many years – our feel-good, self-care culture is finally expanding and one of the key routes to a fast-relaxation  technique is 7-ll breathing, which was developed by Joe Griffin of Human Givens.

The stress arousal system operates by pushing us into “fight or flight” response.  (There’s also a “tend & befriend” stress response which I’ll look at in a different article).

Back to fight & flight.  This reaction is kicked off by something called the “Sympathetic Nervous System” (SNS) which we all have.  It may have been great news for our cavepeople ancestors as they were rushing from a sabre-toothed tiger, or needing to fight a marauding tribesperson.  (It is because they lived to fight another day that they are our ancestors – the ones that didn’t have a stress response got eaten).  But it’s not much use to us today.  Sadly our brains don’t realise this, and it can be that a wrong glance, a hastily written text or a badly worded email can set us off, and before we know it, our hearts are beating faster, our breathing is faster and higher and we are working hard to pump oxygen into our muscles ready to run or attack…   A mechanism which is mostly unnecessary for today’s world.

Fight and flight is obviously not a useful state for us to live in long term, and therefore we need to be able to settle down and breathe/think at a normal pace.  And that’s where the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS – I like to think of it as parachutes of calmness descending)

Our PNS re-settles us into calmness. And fortunately we can hack this system, to bring down our own stress response, by some very simple means.  One of which is 7-11 breathing.

1 – breathe in for a count of 7.

2 – then breathe out for a count of 11.

Remember that our heart rate increases with SNS, and decreases with PNS?  Well our heart rate also increases when we breath in, and decreases when we breathe out.  Thus stimulating the PNS – all those little “Parachutes of Calm”. Therefore breathing in for a shorter time (count to 7) and out for a longer time (count to 11) does the trick!  A few added elements boost the calming effects, for example:  Breathing in through your nose, and out through pursed lips.  And then double that up with breathing into your diaphragm, and you can calm down very quickly indeed. 

Diaphragmatic Breathing:

When you watch a baby asleep you’ll see that its chest barely moves, and all its breath is from stomach.  It’s fully relaxed and it shows.  You can do this too – aim for deep ‘diaphragmatic breathing’ (your diaphragm moves down and pushes your stomach out as you take in a breath) rather than shallower high lung movements.  

Breathing through your nose also helps the diaphragmatic breathing. And you can imagine a balloon in your stomach, which is filled with air and expands as you breathe in, and then deflates as you breathe out.

You can see your stomach visibly move, and you can place one hand on your chest, and another on your belly to notice the difference.

Practice regularly

Get into the habit of 7-11 breathing by practicing regularly. The more you can do this, the more likely it will become your default method of breathing. Calm and relaxed, ready to tackle whatever life throws at you without being hijacked by your stress response.