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Legacy, How You Live Today, More Than What You Leave

Forbes Coaches Council

Esther Weinberg is a renowned business growth accelerator for executives in high-growth industries at The Ready Zone.

The concept of legacy is seemingly massive. People often associate legacy with a name on the wing of a hospital, the cheering and speeches from co-workers at a farewell party, or one’s children.

Really legacy is what endures about you and for you, today and every day. Legacy, whether you know it or not, is something you are already leaving and living every day. How your actions impact those around you either magnifies or detracts from that legacy.

Legacy was an odd concept to me a while back when a colleague brought up the concept of living your legacy today. When she asked me what mine was, I fumbled around for words and instead blurted out something like, “I want to be a good person.” That’s lovely and true. However, it wasn’t exactly what my legacy is and got me thinking deeply: What is my legacy? Am I living my legacy right here and now and what am I amplifying?

This sent me into months of hefty journaling when a meeting with my wonderful late Aunt Chana seemingly had the answers. They were lying deep in my ancestry.

The Impact Of Dignity In Work And Life

My paternal great-grandmother on my grandmother’s side, Dina, was born and raised in Palestine in the 1800s. She was an extremely religious woman who was married to a religious man who studied the Bible in caves during the week with other men who did the same. Dina gave birth to about a dozen children, several of whom died from a plague in Northern Palestine.

The cornerstone of what I know about Dina is that she lived her life with dignity—for herself and her family. They were poor, and Dina had to feed her children. Since she could not rely on her husband for an income, she started a merchant business and would walk with donkeys to Damascus to buy and sell goods. She started off quite small and eventually was able to care for her family.

If that’s not inspiring enough for a religious woman at that time, she divorced her husband, which wasn’t an easy feat, because traditionally in the Jewish faith, only a man can divorce a woman. She later remarried.

The impact of who Dina was being in her life profoundly shaped my life. As I was journaling this question about legacy, the word “dignity” kept coming up, particularly the impact of putting dignity into our work and our lives.

When my father died, and my Aunt Chana and my grandparents sat in mourning for him in Israel, a young religious man came knocking on the door and wanted to know if this was the place where they were mourning my father. Turns out, my father was the person who gave this young man the ability to live his life with dignity by giving him work and money to live and provide for his family.

Dignity was there all along, in my work, my life and my lineage. It became my North Star—treating myself and others with dignity and helping my clients create workplace cultures of dignity, trust, respect and psychological safety. When dignity is emphasized as a guiding principle for everyone in the workplace, from the most senior executives to frontline employees and everyone in between, it is the bridge that transforms relationships and improves every area of employees’ lives, both professionally and personally.

A Three-Part Process For Determining Your Legacy

So the question is: How do you determine what your legacy is? Here’s the process I would suggest:

Part 1: Answer the following questions.

• Where have you had an impact?

• What have you noticed that others appreciate about you?

• What are you most proud of?

• Where would you like to have more of an impact?

• To have a greater impact, what would you need to let go of? What can you do to step into the world of possibility for yourself?

• What legacy are you choosing to live today that incorporates your whole self (work and life)?

When you answer these questions, notice when you are limiting yourself. Give yourself permission to break free of your constraints.

Part 2: Create a visual representation of your legacy.

You can do this using words and images that inspire you. Keep it handy, and enlist others to ensure you are living your legacy fully and completely.

Part 3: Begin utilizing your legacy practically and pragmatically.

• What elements of your work connect to your legacy?

• What areas are out of alignment?

• What can you do to bring them into greater alignment? Who would you need to become? What would you have to let go of?

• How can you amplify more of your voice given your legacy as a context?

• How do you provide self-agency to amplify your legacy in your work?

Build Your Foundation

Anyone can create and live a legacy today because you already doing it. By awakening yourself to what your legacy is, you can truly live and work more intentionally and thoughtfully. It’s the foundation to designing life—by you and for you.


Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?


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