The Legacy Drawing Board

A composite baseball bat is a technological wonder that compensates for a hitter's limited skill by producing towering homeruns that surprise even the hitter.  A wooden bat is less forgiving when the hitter fails to execute.  Contact at the wrong place can lead to a spray of wood in the field with the batter walking back to the dugout with only the handle in hand.  The wood bat has heft that provide honest feedback of your efforts.  Choose the wood bat in the game of life and you will be rewarded with a crack that will bring everyone to the feet.  

Explore your legacy as cinema.  Produce your life story as a filmmaker. Develop a script from a vision, "cast" the people in your life by building meaningful relationships, and collaborate with other artists to enrich and to clarify your story.  Make your legacy the best picture possible.  

Stained glass was referred to as the "Bible of the poor."  We can use the process of creating stain glass as a model for designing and building our legacies.  Is your legacy accessible and understandable to the masses?  Does it reflect, reflect, and diffract sunlight into a dance that fills dark rooms with hope and joy?  Listen to infuse your legacy with the beauty of the rainbow's richness.

Garbage in, garbage out.  This is the essence of system designs.  Pivot to beauty in, beauty out for your legacy design.  Listen to blend and balance design concepts from art and engineering to build your intended legacy and a reserve for recentering it when things go awry.  

Who are your role models for mentorship as you begin to mentor?  The Bible provides us with five examples of men who fulfilled the fundamental responsibility of mentorship: protecting the mentee.  Initially, this will be from external threats.  As the relationship matures, the mentor will need to protect the mentee from internal threats.  Mentors take on this duty because they serve a higher purpose and see the mentee being part of that purpose.  Truth is the currency of mentor/mentee dynamic.  Listen to sharpen your focus and execution as a mentor.  

It's important to pause from legacy building to legacy evaluation.  Set aside time to reflect and to ask others about your legacy.  How fit is it in terms of delivering your message and touching the lives of others?  Examine it for its strength, flexibility, mobility, and balance.   

Writer Farley Ledgerwood identified the four kinds of people you need in your life:👤 The person who won't let you quit.👤 The person who won't let you pretend.👤 The person who makes you feel less alone just by existing. 👤 The person who knew you before the armor.
 Listen to examine your relationships and what direction you want them to go.

Do you show before you tell?  Have you established your identity before assuming responsibilities?  Listen to appreciate the importance of placing indicatives before imperatives in your legacy design and building.  Doing so will position your legacy to empower than to burden.