What LEGACY Will You Leave?...

In this lifetime, we all have a choice to carry forward our parent’s legacies in positive ways no matter what that legacy is or was and regardless of what kind of home we grew up in.  We can repeat unhealthy patterns or we can break them.

Here is a list of some valuable lessons I learned from both my mother and father:

• life is precious
• generosity brings happiness to you and others
• be selfless
• be kind to people no matter who they are or what their background is
• work hard on your relationships with your children
• take care of your body – you only get one!
• give credit where credit is due
• have patience
• control your anger and don't stay angry or harbor resentments
• embrace other’s talents
• motivate and inspire others
• live in honesty, be trustworthy and give the benefit of the doubt
• family comes first
• drinking alcohol doesn’t make problems go away
• work hard on your spiritual self 

Did you notice how no lesson learned was negative?  I will leave it to your imagination as to which lessons I learned from each parent because they were a good teacher and role model and which ones I learned because I refused to repeat unhealthy patterns that I witnessed and that affected me in a negative way.  The truth is both.  No parent is perfect.  Myself included.

As I watched each parent, I learned what patterns and lessons were worth repeating in my own life and which ones weren’t.  It’s about breaking cycles, soaking up the good you have witnessed in your parents and creating an even better legacy to pass down.  I hope my children will take from me the good things they saw in me and turn those things into “great” things in their own lives and take the not so good things I showed them and be sure to break those cycles.

I have no worry to be perfect and did not expect my own parents to be that either.  In fact, if their imperfections have forced me to become a better person, than that in itself is perfect and I couldn’t have hoped for more.  Life is not all roses for any of us, but we all have a choice to carry our wounds forward or to overcome them and create new patterns.  The choices we make do affect the legacy we leave behind. 

We have to always be aware of how our actions and behaviors are shaping and affecting those who are watching, loving us and relying on us.

I decided long ago that my legacy can change each day as long as I am willing to do what it takes by taking steps to become a better person.  I hope to leave behind a legacy of peace, patience, love, joy, faithfulness, kindness, self-control, inspiration and hope.  I have a long way to go to get there, but if I work on it every opportunity I get, then that may mean that my own children have a better chance to fully succeed at their own great legacy.  I know I will be given many tests along the way to work on the legacy I hope to leave.  Life always offers up opportunities for us to learn and grow from, right up until the end.  We just have to have the desire and the willingness to change for the better, to keep an open mind and seek out opportunities for personal growth.

What legacy do you hope to leave?  It’s never too late to get started.

Embrace the journey,

Sheri