The How and Why of Everyday Legacies (Part 7)
by Robert Hackman
Photograph by Laurie-Anne Robert on Unsplash
Our Legacy is written.
It can never be erased.
Lyric from the song ‘Run to Music’
By LifeMusic
The five P’s of Everyday Legacy Mindsets lead to the sixth P that everyone wants, Potency. The capacity to exert influence, bring your desires to fruition, and make a meaningful difference.
You write your Legacies in real-time in each moment of every day. They are defined by your impact on others, your environment, and what you leave behind. You are constantly living and leaving your Legacies at the same time.
That is what makes paying attention to them critical and urgent. You can only live and lead with fewer regrets by giving your Everyday Legacies attention with intention.
Everyday Legacy Mindsets comprise a set of feelings and convictions concentrated on your impact on others, your environment, and what you leave behind. They shift what matters most to you to the forefront so you give it the attention it deserves. The five P’s provide you with a framework to keep them there.
The five P’s of
Everyday Legacy Mindsets
The Potency to live and lead with fewer regrets
Each of the P’s helps you interact with more conviction and confidence. Together, they offer a comprehensive approach that moves you toward embodying the heart of what you find essential.
The best time to adopt Everyday Legacy Mindsets is early in life. The second-best time is right now. While you can never go back and make a brand-new start, you can always start to create a brand-new end.
None of us gets do-overs, as much as we may long for them. Our significant roles are rife with mistakes, whether parenting, long-term relationships, leading a team or company, or as a committed change agent. That is the nature of life.
When awake and aware in the present, you accept your humanness and recognize the need for empathy and compassion. These attributes connect you to yourself and others. The question is not whether you will err. The question is, for what are you willing to risk going astray?
Making as many errors as possible is a worthy goal if you commit to what you value most. Missteps are crucial and often provide the most direct path to learning. They show you what does not work and refine what you love.
Friedrich Nietzsche declared a person ‘who has a compelling why can endure almost any how.’
Evidence shows people’s most significant regret is not taking greater risks in their lives, regardless of how those risks turn out. When the errors you make are in service to what you value most, you regard them differently. Thus, they do not create regret. They lessen it.
On the contrary, leaving decisions unmade and yearnings unattended create significant remorse.
The most significant danger you face is forsaking your most crucial decisions and foundational life practices, determining your purpose, clarifying your highest principles, committing to living your most personally authentic life, returning to the present, and striving to take on the most healthy and helpful perspectives.
Important decisions carry risk. Making one choice eliminates others, which often stops you. Through honing your focus, however, you reveal possibilities and attract opportunities that do not show themselves until you decide.
Everyday Legacy Mindsets and their five P’s awaken your consciousness and remind you that you are always at choice. By default, you choose all day long. Your life is a direct result of your accumulated actions and decisions.
The automatic pilot of a plane is only on target a tiny percentage of the time. Mostly, it tacks back and forth. It is helpful to remember that being slightly off course over time leads you to a very different destination. The same is true for your life and leadership.
Navigating your Everyday Legacies necessitates continually recognizing when you go awry and getting yourself back on course. Verify your position concerning the impact you seek and take corrective action.
The five P’s are self-reinforcing methods that combine to help you contribute to embracing your one precious life.
Regardless of how misaligned your life has been with your most authentic desires, you can initiate restorative actions, practice forgiveness of yourself and others, and change direction. The responsibility of Everyday Legacy Mindsets shifts your focus to what you can do ‘now’ and moving forward in ways that acknowledge the past and yet do not get defined or confined by it.
Teams and Organizations
Leaders of the most successful teams and companies align around core purpose and principles. They create psychologically safe environments that promote uncommon candor that prompts them to consider various perspectives.
They operate in the present while drawing on the past and envisioning the future. These leaders emulate the best of others, integrating it into their character and workplaces to reinforce the desired culture. They do not merely copy the latest trend and assume inserting it will work for them.
Leading others and managing teams and organizations in pursuit of a consequential purpose represents a most challenging and worthy endeavor. Everyday Legacy Mindsets and the supporting five P’s help you pursue it potently.
Worthy Considerations:
- To what do you give your attention? Does it match your intention? How might employing the five P’s help you better align them?
- Do you find yourself more willing to take risks in service to something you find genuinely significant? Do you regard your missteps differently when you are?
- Do you find Everyday Legacy Mindsets compelling, vital, and relevant to you, your team, and your organization? How much more responsible would you be if you put them into practice?
- What keeps you from living and leaving the Everyday Legacies you yearn for? How would starting today benefit you and others?
- What is your pathway to fewer regrets?
Please connect with me to learn how you can integrate the five P’s into how you live and lead to benefit yourself, your family, your team, and your organization. I welcome the conversation.
Robert Hackman, Principal, 4C Consulting and Coaching, helps people live and lead with fewer regrets. He grows and develops leaders through executive coaching consulting, facilitation, and training of individuals, teams, and organizations. He is committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He facilitates trusting environments that promote uncommonly candid conversations. Rob is also passionate about the power of developing Legacy Mindsets and has conducted over 50 Legacy interviews with people to date.
A serious man with a dry sense of humor who loves absurdity can often be found hiking rocky elevations or making music playlists. His mixes, including Pandemic Playlists and Music About Men, can be found on Spotify.