Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 337 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Creating, Living, and Leaving Your Legacy #1

Thank you for joining us for our 7 days a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 337 of our trek, and yesterday we explored 8 analogies of hiking on a tough trail which are similar to our trek of life. Today and tomorrow we will focus our trek on the legacy trail before we move our focus to knowing and establishing your life purpose through the beta version of Your Life Plan Blueprint Course.

Thank you so much for coming along with me on our daily trek through life creating, living, and leaving a legacy, which is accomplished as we grow in our wisdom, insight and understanding. While some of our daily treks span multiple days, you can join us at any time and start along with us from that point on.

If you would like to listen to any of the past episodes, please go to Wisdom-Trek.com to listen to them and read the daily journal. You can also subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on iTunes, Spreaker, Stitcher, Soundcloud, iHeart Radio, and Google Play so each day’s trek will be downloaded to you automatically.

We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. We had a very blessed weekend as were able to invest some quality time with four of our grandchildren who stayed the night on Friday through late on Saturday. We had three segments of monster versus children battles, where I was the monster, of course. In addition to that, we were able to finish sanding the woodwork and floors in the parlor and will be able to apply polyurethane when we return in mid-May.

We had hoped to have the grandkids help paint the swing and fort set, but the weather was too iffy with cool temperatures and intermittent rain. We also made a late day decision to purchase two double and two single porch gliders and 12 pots of knock-out roses for The Big House in preparation for the Chamberlain Family Reunion over July 4^th weekend. Nat and Elizabeth were gracious to help us deliver them to our home as Nat has a large pickup.

Preparation at The Big House for the reunion is part of the legacy that we live each day as the family homestead is very meaningful to all family members. We are blessed to be caretakers of the place. Legacy should be important in each of our lives. That is why for a couple of days we will focus on creating, living, and leaving your legacy.

Creating, Living, and Leaving Your Legacy

One undisputable fact of life is that, at some point, we are all going to die. None of us is guaranteed another breath, let alone tomorrow or many years. Many people don’t like to think about it, let alone plan for it. Think for a moment if you would, what would you like your obituary to say?  How you lived your legacy each day and the impact that you made on others through your time, talent, and treasures is what truly remains when you die and will impact all of eternity.

Creating and living your legacy during your life should be solely to benefit future generations. The full impact is something you will never see come to fruition. Just like a farmer who plants an apple tree, knowing he may never live to taste its fruits, living our legacy is a gift whose impact you will leave behind without expecting anything in return.

Just like that farmer’s sprouting tree, living legacies don’t happen overnight—and they don’t happen by accident. They’re deliberately crafted over years of wise choices, hard work, and dedication. This certainly does not require that all your resources be forfeited while you are still alive, but it does require a mind-shift. You have to understand that you are not really the owner of your God-given time, talents, and treasures but caretakers or stewards of them for as long as you are alive.  There are some basic principles that are important in fulfilling your role as steward.

1. Understand Your Legacy

First, you need to really grasp why it’s important to live and leave a legacy in the first place. To paraphrase one of my virtual mentors Jim Rohn, “The legacy we first live and then leave is part of the ongoing foundation of life. Those who came before impacted our lives and leave us the world we live in. Those who will come after will have only our impact on them and what we leave them. We are stewards of this world, and we have a calling in our lives to positively impact the lives of others and leave the word better than how we found it, even if it seems like our impact is small.”

2. Choose Your Legacy

Living a legacy comes in different shapes and forms, requiring varying levels of effort and commitment. You may have the resources to leave substantial financial legacies to companies or organizations that will impact the world. As you create and live your legacy, hone in on where you can have the greatest impact and choose to focus in those areas.

Legacy is much more than leaving resources to an organization. Leadership expert John Maxwell summed it up this way, “Too often, leaders put their energy into organizations, buildings, systems, or other lifeless objects, but only people live on after we are gone. Everything else is temporary.”

Dr. Ken Dychtwald determined that, “There is an enormous desire for people, especially when they are older, to share what they’ve learned, to pass on lessons of a lifetime, to teach, and to feel that their life experience is being invested, even planted, into the field of tomorrow.”  Interesting is that there is also a natural, innate appetite on the part of younger generations to receive that this legacy.

3. Focus Your Legacy

Granted, conveying the accumulated lessons of a lifetime is easier said than done. In deciding exactly what you want to put out into the world, look inward first.

Start by identifying your strengths. The most obvious place to look is your career or life experiences. You are trained to think of your skills and talents as what you do at work, but if you think of them as core strengths instead, you can begin to see how they are more widely applicable. You can live your legacy of impact through your strengths. Living your legacy should be a labor of love, not a chore. It should be that natural part of you that shines out because it is who you are.

This statement is important because it not only sets the direction for your life but it also determines the impact of your living legacy and the impact of you will leave throughout eternity. It is part of your daily trek.

Our living legacy should be an example to others to follow as we imitate God as is mentioned in Ephesians 5:1-2, “Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children.  Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.”

Today and tomorrow our trek covers a focus on creating, living, and leaving our legacy. This is certainly important for us to grasp and apply as we move into an extended segment on life-planning, which will include the beta version of Your Life Plan Blueprint workbook which will be available for download. So, encourage your friends and family to join us, and then come along tomorrow for another day of our Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.

That will finish our trek for today. As you enjoy your daily dose of wisdom, we ask you to help us grow Wisdom-Trek by sharing with your family and friends through email, Facebook, Twitter, or in person so they can come along with us each day.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most of all your friend as I serve you through the Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal each day.

As we take this trek together, let us always:

1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
2. Love Unconditionally
3. Listen Intentionally
4. Learn Continuously
5. Lend to others Generously
6. Lead with Integrity
7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

This is Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy Your Journey, and Create a Great Day Every Day! See you tomorrow!