Take a look at your personal life, and appreciate what you are. You are an adult. You may enjoy a vibrant social circle, and a mutually supportive, intimate relationship. You have achieved this by being sensitive and caring toward others, practicing good communication skills, and making intelligent personal decisions. You are a successful person.
Take a look at your professional life, and do the same. You may have an expanded and interactive professional circle. You enjoy an interesting job and your successful career. You have achieved this by getting the right education at the right school, and making wise career choices along the way. You continue to advance through positions by excelling at your job, receiving good support, and cultivating great professional connections. You are a successful professional.
Take a look at your personal life, and appreciate what you are. You are an adult. You may enjoy a vibrant social circle, and a mutually supportive, intimate relationship. You have achieved this by being sensitive and caring toward others, practicing good communication skills, and making intelligent personal decisions. You are a successful person.
Take a look at your professional life, and do the same. You may have an expanded and interactive professional circle. You enjoy an interesting job and your successful career. You have achieved this by getting the right education at the right school, and making wise career choices along the way. You continue to advance through positions by excelling at your job, receiving good support, and cultivating great professional connections. You are a successful professional.
Through both identities, the personal and the professional, you have accumulated numerous assets; some in a material form, others are of a social and professional form. The level of income you have reached allows you to make riskier financial decisions and affords you a more lavish lifestyle. It also earns you a certain level of esteem that opens doors and opportunities for you. You are loved and respected by your family and friends, and your trajectory to success is the envy of your peers.
Congratulations on all of your success! You have paved a magnificent path for your life. Now let’s ask: What are you going to do with all that?
Not right now. Later. In other words: What kind of legacy will you create and leave behind?
This query is simple yet loaded: How can you use your earned assets, the financial, the material, and the non-material alike to create your legacy? This question is not meant for beyond the grave, it is for here and now. How can you use your social and professional status, your time, your power, and your wealth to leave something for the people of your community and for the generations to follow?
You can distribute your wealth among your family and friends, but you can also share some of it with institutes in your community, and plant seeds that will bear fruit far away from your tree.
Here is another way to look at this issue. Success in any form brings with it a certain sense of confidence and invincibility. The wall that forms between you and others, colleagues, peers, or friends, brings on an intuit of security and power, but also isolation and arrogance. While giving you comfort and security, this wall separates and distances you from those supportive circles that enabled your success to this point. With the wall up, the people who form these circles are left on the other side, disappointed, neglected, even betrayed. It is your moral responsibility not to leave them there. You can create large windows and doors on that wall. Share your abilities, and those you help will help you to continue and enhance your strength. These contributions you will make will continue to speak of for you long after you no longer can make them. Do good to make the community you are part of better. It helped you get this far, and it is now your turn to return the favor.
Through both identities, the personal and the professional, you have accumulated numerous assets; some in a material form, others are of a social and professional form. The level of income you have reached allows you to make riskier financial decisions and affords you a more lavish lifestyle. It also earns you a certain level of esteem that opens doors and opportunities for you. You are loved and respected by your family and friends, and your trajectory to success is the envy of your peers.
Congratulations on all of your success! You have paved a magnificent path for your life. Now let’s ask: What are you going to do with all that?
Not right now. Later. In other words: What kind of legacy will you create and leave behind?
This query is simple yet loaded: How can you use your earned assets, the financial, the material, and the non-material alike to create your legacy? This question is not meant for beyond the grave, it is for here and now. How can you use your social and professional status, your time, your power, and your wealth to leave something for the people of your community and for the generations to follow?
You can distribute your wealth among your family and friends, but you can also share some of it with institutes in your community, and plant seeds that will bear fruit far away from your tree.
Here is another way to look at this issue. Success in any form brings with it a certain sense of confidence and invincibility. The wall that forms between you and others, colleagues, peers, or friends, brings on an intuit of security and power, but also isolation and arrogance. While giving you comfort and security, this wall separates and distances you from those supportive circles that enabled your success to this point. With the wall up, the people who form these circles are left on the other side, disappointed, neglected, even betrayed. It is your moral responsibility not to leave them there. You can create large windows and doors on that wall. Share your abilities, and those you help will help you to continue and enhance your strength. These contributions you will make will continue to speak of for you long after you no longer can make them. Do good to make the community you are part of better. It helped you get this far, and it is now your turn to return the favor.