Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 212 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

How to Live a Legacy Each Day #1

Thank you for joining us for our 7 days a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 212 of our Trek, and for the past three days, we explored how to live life fully by living with a purpose and on purpose. Today we will explore another trail that will help us learn how to live a legacy life each day. Listening daily to Wisdom-Trek is one thing that will help you gain the wisdom needed to live your legacy today that will also allow you to leave a legacy tomorrow. If you miss any of our Wisdom-Trek episodes, please go to Wisdom-Trek.com to listen to them and read the daily journal.

 We are recording our podcast from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. This final week of 2015 is a busy one for us wrapping up some work with a couple of clients and continuing with our 2016 life planning. It has been cool and very rainy all week in Ohio, but we have had no snow. Paula and I have dreams of being snowed in, but unless the Internet and electricity are off, most of our work can continue as usual.

Our renovation contractors are making good progress in the library, parlor, and downstairs foyer/hallway. The drywall is completed on the ceilings, and the walls are getting smoothed out in preparation for painting.  Unavoidably there is drywall and plaster dust everywhere, but we will wait for any major clean up until they are finished.  It is amazing how it seeps into rooms that are closed off, but it will be well worth it when it is completed.

Today and for the next couple of days, our trek does take us on a slightly different trail, as we consider what it means to live a legacy each day and not just wait to leave a legacy when we die.  This is an important concept to grasp.  Our positive impact on others should begin as early as possible on our life’s trek and grow each day and then last throughout eternity in the lives of others.

So let’s explore.

How to Live a Legacy Each Day #1

As we start today’s Trek, I want to ask, “What kind of impact or legacy do you have on others? If someone were to describe your attributes in one or two sentences, what would they say? What do others think about you and the life that you live?”

Living a legacy each day is part of living with purpose and on purpose, which we explored over the past three days. It is part of living a rich and satisfying life. I am not referring to money but a rich life that money can’t buy.

In reality your life leaves a legacy each day - that is not an option. The question is “What type of legacy are you living?” However you frame that question, the truth is that every day you are leaving a legacy that will impact the lives of your family, friends, and others, which will last well beyond your time on earth.

What are you passing onto them daily? They are impacted by your life or legacy whether that is good or bad. The legacy you live impacts the legacy they live, and that will impact circles of influence and generations well beyond yourself. As a grandfather of 6 grandchildren so far, I am reminded of the verse in Proverbs 13:22, "Good people leave an inheritance to their grandchildren, but the sinner’s wealth passes to the godly."

This inheritance is not just referring to money but the wealth of a life well lived - a life of positive influence.

I read a comment not too long ago that we should all reflect on, "The central paradox of our time is that most of us are earning more money and living better in material terms than our parents did at the same age…Yet by most measures we’re working longer and more frantically than ever before, and the time and energy left for our non-working lives are evap...