In an interview, Oprah Winfrey said she told Maya Angelou that she thought opening a school in South Africa might be her greatest legacy. In response to that, Maya Angelou said: “Your legacy is every life that you touch.” That is one of the most eye opening things I have ever heard!
If you realize that your legacy is every single life that you touch, then you know how you treat everyone matters. You know that even doing that thing that you consider small can touch someone and change their lives. You realize that you don’t have to wait for some big thing that you do that the world finds admirable and worth mentioning, rather, every day you are building your legacy.
Something you do today that doesn’t seem like much may impact someone’s life in ways you never imagined. That’s why I love hearing stories where people talk about what someone told them when they were young, and it changed their lives. If you bear this in mind in all that you do, you will leave a great legacy.
When Anne Frank wrote in her diary, as a 13-15-year-old girl during Nazi Germany, she couldn’t have known what an impact it would make on the world. The part that I’d like to refer to here is where she says how she didn’t want her life to be meaningless and soon forgotten. She wanted to be remembered after her death. She lived only up to about 15 years old, and yet she was never forgotten, people still read what she wrote as a 13-15-year-old.
She thought it, wrote it down and it happened. Granted she didn’t live to see it, but it happened. For me, this shows that anything really is possible. She just heard on the radio that what people wrote could be used after the war and she took action; she continued to write in her diary, only now with the hope that somebody would one day read it. Someone did read it, and to date, millions of people have read it.
Be exemplary through your life and your actions, be a role model. If you knew your actions and your words rub off on people, would you do what you’re doing now? Would you say what you’re saying now? These are the people who when you’ve ‘made it’ are going to be telling stories about you. Whatever you do or say and how you treat people will be your legacy. Don’t wait until you are great at what you do or until you’re known to be a role model. You are already a role model; you just don’t know it yet.
As you pursue your dreams, start working on your legacy now. Through your actions right now, through how you treat people right now and through how you carry yourself right this very moment. How you carry yourself or treat yourself as well, depend largely on how you feel about yourself. Before you can impact others positively, you have to work on yourself and not only know yourself but love yourself.
