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Chapter 4

Start with the End in Mind

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Frederick Buechner

“All of us get just one exciting life to live here on this earth. How are we going to use it?” This was our speaker, Adria Libolt’s opening remark at my daughter’s graduation from high school. Although she was making a difference as a teacher, Adria felt called to another vocation as a Deputy Warden in the Michigan Department of Corrections, where she spent over 20 years in prisons. The concept of how are you going to use your life is certainly an important question for a high school senior to consider as they are making plans for their futures, but what about the rest of us?

I believe that we are here on earth for a purpose. Each of us has different gifts and talents, and when used to our greatest potential, these gifts will provide excitement and joy to our lives and to others around us. A recent statistic in Forbes Magazine stated that 74% of employees are dissatisfied with their work. If we are unhappy with where we currently stand in life, at work or at home, isn’t it only us who can make the choice to change it?

As we hire employees to join our team at MSNW, we seek those with the skills to do the work, but even more so, we seek the passion around the work. When we find the individual that loves what they do and is also very good at it, we are confident we have made a successful match.

Whatever stage we are at in life – a recent graduate, a busy Mom managing a household, in the height of a career, or enjoying retirement – we have an opportunity to provide great influence.

Whatever stage we are at in life – a recent graduate, a busy mom managing a household, in the height of a career, or enjoying retirement – we have an opportunity to provide great influence. This influence can be negative and destructive, or positive and life-building. It’s crucial to ask ourselves if we are making the choice to live our lives in such a way that we can have the most positive impact on our families and friends, our work, and our communities. The impact we leave over a lifetime becomes our legacy.

The impact we leave over a lifetime becomes our legacy.

Living a Legacy

At a recent leadership retreat I led, our focus topic was The Leader’s Legacy. We discussed as a group that all of us want to leave a meaningful legacy – a positive impact on our family, our business, and our community.

The word legacy is defined as follows:

legacy, noun , leg·a·cy

1 A gift or a bequest, which is handed down, endowed or conveyed from one person to another.

2 Something transmitted from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.

One of our members approached the topic in a different way. While the rest of us were thinking about the legacy we want to leave, which is certainly important, he reminded us of the definition of legacy, and that it starts with something we have been given. All of us have received a legacy first. It may be a positive legacy that has been passed on to us, perhaps a special gift, or the traditions that we carry on; or it can be negative – like a behavior propensity, or a problem that exists because of something that has happened in the past. We are then a conduit to pass on the legacy that we create to those who follow us.

A colleague of mine gave the group three key mantras to think about in regard to legacy.

 Choose It. Choose today what you want your legacy to be. None of us know how long our lives will be, so we must choose now.

 Live it. Live your legacy today. Once you have determined what you want your legacy to be, don’t wait. Live it now.

 Celebrate It. There is so much to be grateful for. Celebrate the legacy you have received and the legacy you want to live and leave. Find the good in each day.9

Start with the End in Mind

You don’t want to have regrets. When you ask people at the end of their lives what is most important, they rarely say that it is the fancy car, or the trophies that sit dusty on the shelf. Rather, it is the relationships they have, the loves in their life, the gifts they have given to others. If this type of clarity is gained by people at the end of life, what is it that we can learn from their wisdom?

Palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware took note after spending years with individuals during their last days and ended up writing a book about it titled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.10 When asking about any regrets her clients had or if there was anything they would do differently she found common themes surfacing. Here are the top five regrets she heard over and over:

1 “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”11Ware found this to be the most common regret of all of them, as well as the one that seemed to cause the most frustration as her client’s realizations came too late.12 Are you living a life that is true to yourself? If this is not clear to you, you will have a chance to discover the answer as you work through the next couple of chapters.

2 “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”13I have to admit to struggling with this one when I read this research – perhaps because it needs my attention. A strong work ethic is an admirable thing. I recall my parents showing my siblings and I a good example of working hard and teaching us to do the same - a principle I now teach my own children. The problem comes when work becomes all-consuming and supersedes everything else in your life.

3 “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”14So often we allow fears to hold us back. Many people keep things inside in order to “keep the peace” with others. However, when this is done too often you lose part of yourself, along with the ability to truly become everything you are capable of and live the life you are meant to have.

4 “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”15Loving relationships are the key to a rich and fulfilled life. In the last chapter we talked about friends and family as one of the seven main areas of life. This is an area where we can fall into automatic living and take for granted these important relationships.

5 “I wish I had let myself be happier.”16You may believe you don’t have the power to make your own path. Together we are uncovering this lie and you will discover that happiness is a choice. You don’t have to remain stuck in old patterns and habits – instead you can break free to the life you have always wanted.

As you review this list, what is the greatest regret you have as you look over the life you have lived so far? Is one of these a particular “watch” area for you? Take a moment to think about it and write it down.

One of the most difficult, yet most useful exercises I have ever done was writing my own eulogy. Starting with the end in mind, I wrote what I wanted people to remember about me when my life on earth was done. What legacy did I want to leave? What impact did I want to have on the world around me? What would I want those who knew me to say about what I had done with my life? Though understandably a bit morbid, taking the time to do a similar exercise for yourself will be most helpful in determining what you need to be doing now.

Look ahead and think about yourself at the age of 100. As your 100-year-old self, what would you say about the life you are living? In the challenge section at the end of the chapter I have provided some questions to ask yourself. Think about this now, so you don’t get to 100 and look back at your life with regret.

I developed a Legacy Timeline exercise that is a helpful tool to review the decades of your life so far – the significant events, the various seasons, the highs and lows, and how they have shaped you into the person you are today. Once you go through the process of filling out the timeline, you then go back and review the last few decades. How have your life experiences impacted you and others and shaped your legacy?

The second part of the timeline exercise is to go forward into the next two decades – a 20-year outlook. What do you want to add to the timeline? Think about and write down what you wish to intentionally create in the coming season to begin fulfilling the legacy you want to leave.

As we come to the end of this chapter, let me leave you with some personal thoughts on this topic of legacy from my esteemed colleagues:

 I will give more and take less.

 I will speak into the lives of others.

 I will ask myself, “What is the right thing to do?”

 Each one of us has more impact than we realize.

 If you are doing the right thing, the legacy part will take care of itself.

The decision is yours. You can continue to live on automatic and take things as they come, or you can choose to live intentionally. Take charge and design your best life – one that is destined to leave a positive legacy. It’s up to you. No one can do it for you. Let’s make the most out of the one exciting life that we have.