Brian Castelli – With His Heart

Your legacy is now!

A few months ago I attended a Christian Men’s Leadership Conference in my area. One of the speakers closed with a few comments about legacy.

My legacy is *now*. I’m always thinking about what I’m going to do, the legacy I’m going to leave. The speaker said that this is wrong thinking. The legacy I leave is where I am right now because I don’t know if I’m going to survive to see tomorrow. He used the example of Tim Russert, the TV reporter who slumped over in his chair at work last week. He had no warning. Poof, he was gone. Not everybody gets a notice like my uncle did. He had cancer and received a “you have 4 weeks to live” prognosis. My grandfather, in excellent physical condition, died of an aneurysm. He was gone in minutes.

This could happen to me. None of us know how much time we have left. Steven Curtis Chapman does a song called, “The Next 5 Minutes.” The premise of the song is that we can predict with high certainty that we’ll live for 5 more minutes, so let’s use those 5 minutes to bring glory to God.

On a related note, I recently read something from Chuck Colson in which he said that every choice we make either builds God’s kingdom or tears it down. Put these two concepts together and it’s pretty clear that we are to spend the next 5 minutes building – God’s kingdom and our legacy.
Let’s get busy, people!

I have two ideas to share. I originally posted them as a comment to my friend, Laura’s, blog.

Check out:http://archercoaching.blogspot.com/
First, I am a slave to the calendar on my computer, so I set appointments (with reminders) for things I ought to do. For example, every weekday morning I have a 30-minute appointment titled, “Read a little.” When that reminder goes off, I read business or self-help literature on days when I’m not buried! ha!

Second, I make it a habit to keep important books that I’ve read in my office. I will leave the book open to an important chapter when I go home at night. When I arrive in the office the next morning, there is a reminder of something important I’ve read.

These are two ways that I intentionally keep “personal best practices” at the top of my to-do list.