Angelina Carleton
Jan 29, 20217 min
Updated: Feb 5, 2022
Enclosed below is a video I recorded one year ago in the excitement of the new year of 2020. I also extended my thoughts from an advisory perspective. Little did I know that we would all be tested to rise to new occasions and opportunities.
Listen, we all have an opportunity to build our personal legacies, no matter where we are in life or the year it is on the calendar.
Thus, please find below last year’s advisory insights as well as my tip for 2021 as we travel forward.
1. Our blind spots are costing us. What we are not willing or ready to look at can grow like an iceberg under the water. Perhaps it relates to dodging difficult conversations or our fixation with licking our wounds in not moving forward. When I talk about legacy planning, I am not referring only to the traditional definition of property acquisition or financial assets in a portfolio. I believe you also need a plan for the softer aspects of your legacy such as getting to know your history more, the people around you or the people you would ike to have around you. A part of the planning is also discovering your top 3 core values to begin aligning your goals and actions around honoring the parts that bring you happiness. As a society in casual conversation and in the mainstream media, we often do talk about the finite resource of time. It is a non-renewable resource. Yet when we better invest our time, we feel better about ourselves and more in integrity.
2. Our time equals our life. Yet ... many a client will not realize they are cheating themselves when they only work on their professional goals and then, wonder why the other parts of their life are empty. Part of developing the softer side of your legacy is evolving new areas.
It’s one thing to have to deal with naysayers in a professional setting and it’s another thing when we absorb that toxic mindset and internalize it.
What am I saying? Just as some people never grow up in pitting themselves against one another on the playground, at work or in courtrooms, they can become adversarial not just with others but also, with themselves. In the will to survive and compete, the side effects can include one becoming their own tall, brick wall that goes on for miles around them.
They can build an unconscious belief, so strong and deep, that they will test their coach and trusted advisors in “prove my beliefs wrong!” in becoming what they have had to resist. While I can shift them in re-framing their perspective, their brain may still take on a “fighting stance” in that the brain likes what is familiar even when it does not serve their interests.
Individuals can passionately defend their existing beliefs because they have become so comfortable in a "me vs. the world" mode of being compared to growing spiritual. They know that to get past discomfort and make it to that better, higher and happier place of joy – they must let go of the deep anger and pain others caused to make room for possibilities.
This decision can happen in an instant or it can be a tunnel of inertia in "letting go" depending on the level of betrayal in their being gun shy.
What is interesting about humans is that one belief can set the tone for one year, one decade or one lifetime. When another year goes by and the results are the same, the brain can easily fall into a presumption and righteous pattern of “look at the results of my existing beliefs, they must be right!”- even if on a soul or spiritual level, they know they are settling.
3. One solution is to test each belief:
A. What parts of us are holding on? Is it the parts that have created great things or, the parts that live in comfort... coasting, not being called out. Not been fully seen. Or the wounded parts. One of the great things about coaching is being able to "name it" in articulation compared to staying confused or lost another year.
B. How is your overall mindset setting you up for a great personal legacy or entrapping you by lack of self-responsibility? When was the last time you asked three people if your mindset opens up space to lift your higher in consciousness or is an asset to the development of your legacy?
C. Wouldn't it be great if we let go of a little bit of control in exchange for access to the best available resources, starting with knowing how to tap into our own emotional resourcefulness within?
The people around us may mean well but if they don’t have not transformed to rise up in meeting their own legacy goals, they will not be able to offer us breakthroughs to build forward in more than one area. In other words, if they have not done the self-reflection work ... they can only lead us to where they are at.
We need to find others.
The blessing with problems, especially complex ones, is that they make us come face to face with how to take responsibility for more. The stuff that others avoid. When other people run from owning up, there is an opportunity to serve in filling in that gap.
Case studies at universities are excellent but academics may only cover content given their school’s reputation and financial investors whom extend grants as well as donations. Professors can avoid “hot potato” topics because either they have been protected from real life outside of their bubble or, they won’t know how to lead where they’ve never had to personally walk
There are many things that come with legacy wealth, finding your support networks, as well as defining, developing and executing your legacy.
While "access to the best resources" can feel like finding a needle in a haystack in who to trust and those who know their craft, this area becomes vital in building our team of allies that we can trust in the ability to delegate and the efficiency of our time.
D. How worthy do you believe you are in even building out your personal legacy?
It is always easier to spend your life licking your wounds and distracted, especially when enough people do not notice or speak the truth to you. Depending on your past experiences, this above question can be conceptual or real.
If you were the bully or the partier, be aware that the world needs you to be courageous compared to cowardly in shifting your energy. If you were the victim, humility does not mean that you have to be defined by humiliation in your identity forevermore.
We need your human elements to come forward to solve problems and show others what is possible. Your insights & intuition may be exactly what is needed to be the real deal when today's leadership is failing us based on greed alone (cue: financial metrics only).
What was once deemed weak to talk about has now becomes ESG (environmental, social, governance) because both human dignity and this planet's resources have faced untold carnage.
Why is this important to your legacy? You may be the one person with a heart to make a small difference in your community or a large impact on the world stage. Be the one who still wonders enough to ask the curious questions.
If we count ourselves out first by not accepting or realizing we are worth it, we will miss out on our legacy completion.
So, my wish for you this upcoming year is to make space for kinder beliefs around your evolution's journey, to find more of the right allies and to see that your worth is more than external gold in the energy it brings to others here and now.
May your blind spots become clear through the guidance of a coach, or advisor, to fulfill the next steps of your legacy's development and execution.
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What You Will Learn From Legacy Planning
Did you know that only 1 in 22,000 Americans has a coach? Let alone a coach to help them develop and execute their personal legacy? When I went to find a coach to guide me on my legacy, in truly hearing me, I could not find it in the marketplace.
* A coach is for the brave hearted who can and will handle a future that includes uncertainty in the exchange of great growth and great rewards. Stop leaving possibilities and opportunities on the table. Because of fear of what others will think.
While it’s easier to accept as well as defend existing beliefs, others need you as an example of being better and having more character in leadership and role models today. Our existing and future generations need you to cut a path in the example you can set.
My coaching practice offers you tools, best practices and insights for guidance as you, or we together, define, develop and execute your legacy. I have fine-tuned it down to 17 principles worth exploring in the collaboration with clients - in ‘noticing’ how they are approaching the softer side of their legacy planning. How does meaning, purpose and vision play a role?
Furthermore, we will explore the following:
1. How has societal programming supported or crumbled your legacy vision?
2. How are your existing beliefs convenient but costly in how you see yourself and what is possible based on that identity?;
3. What are your core beliefs as well as top three core values: week to week, which as more influence?
4. What are some better quality questions we can ask and record each week to transfer the softer side of your legacy and creating small shifts and steps each day;
5. How would happen if and when we look at your life from both the bigger picture, or the 10,000’ view to the final week, in what this would give you access in – in making the next right decisions for you?
6. Why dedicating 30-60 minutes a day to reflection and self-care grants better clarity as a part time job you accept to bring out the best in you?
7. How to develop your inner landscape and inform others in your world as you grow and evolve so they can be a part of it compared to feeling threatened in losing you. Remember the brain likes, prefers familiarity.
Time to invest in your practical education to increase your awareness in today’s landscape and write out your 1, 5 and 10 year vision in the bigger picture of your legacy. Even the act of writing out your goals becomes a part of your legacy, as a record for future generations in your example as a role model.
Just as a bookkeeper records each entry for the year end returns, your daily and weekly decisions create another type of ledger in how you lived your lifestyle and held to your values and integrity. Your legacy deserves more than a video game app to hold you accountable – you deserve exclusive, personalized coaching and world class support.