By Todd Duncan

Success requires living now, and significance requires lasting forever. if you want to make your life matter, then consider this: you must invest your work hours in something that will be legacy-leaving.

What makes great leaders? Do we measure their success by the size of the organizations they leave behind or the bottom lines they build? Maybe. History shows leaders as they are in light of their accomplishments—but true leadership is measured with more than mere productivity. As observers, we see that the leaders who truly leave marks of success are the ones who carved out the intangibles, that certain something that elevates them above others. This is legacy.

Legacy is different from success. It is a body of work that, when held up to the light of reality, gives the student guidance and inspiration. It is the connection between successful numbers and moral triumph—it is a record of all that makes us who we are.

Daily Legacy

Each day is full of problems, victories, and caffeine headaches. But what most people call “the grind” is really an opportunity—an opportunity to write another chapter of your legacy. The daily happenings spread out over time and become your life marks. These are the rather menial and obligatory tasks that define your days, weeks, and months. But hidden in the obligatory tasks are the treasures of legacy, the build- ing blocks of what will be, wrapped up in the now.

If you are constantly looking for the next big break, you will ignore the present passing before you. It is in the now that legacy is built. Each small victory throughout life equals your accumulated legacy. It just doesn’t happen from nothing, or all at once.

A Significant Investment

Legacy is accumulated over time. It is intentional living through everything life throws at you. Through the testing comes success. Legacy can be both negative and positive; it can be substantive, or it can be forgettable. So what sets a legacy of worth apart from an empty one? Significance.

Great leaders seek significance in their professional pursuits. They ask tough questions about their career paths: Is this something that adds worth to my life? Is this something that is making a difference in the lives of others? Is this something that is impacting my community for the good?
At some point in our lives we are all leaders. We either lead ourselves down a destructive, undisciplined path, or we make an impact because we are disciplined self- leaders—ready to pour into others.

Filling The Void

The truth is, only a handful of people seek out transcendent ventures that will leave a lasting impact. Most people never separate themselves from the society dross. Most want to blend in, stay the course, and finish life in one piece. In the sports world, this is known as playing not to lose. Building legacy, however, is for people who play to win—the prize being lasting significance beyond one lifetime.

As you think through the tension between making your mark and leaving your legacy, consider your life experience and life passions. What have you always been drawn to? What recurring themes do you see along your life’s time line? When we focus so much on making a mark along our career paths, we tend to relinquish the idea of lasting significance. Legacy, to us, is a far-away concept left to retirees and dead guys. When we give significance a pass, we diminish our mark in the now.

Remember, one begets the other; either we strive for legacy by being intentional every day or we short-circuit our impact now and are content to be, at best, a flash in the pan—fiery hot but quickly extinguished.

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