Legacies aren't (just) for dead people!

A garden at the end of the street

A well’s clean water

Swings in the park

Books in a library

Your story

Grandma’s story

A weekly card tournament

Horn lessons in the garage

A lifesaving machine in the local hospital

A girl going to school in a faraway country

They’re all Legacies.

What are mine?

Was I happy?

Did I matter?

Table of Contents

What They Say

What I Say

Introduction

What’s it All About... Alfie?

WHO... is this book for?

Legacy Primer

Finding a Definition

You Talkin’ to Me?

Legacy and Life

Time – Hey buddy, spare a minute?

Happiness – Your Legacy Smile?

Ego – Hey, look what I did!

Religion – It Glitters Like Gold!

Your Raw Materials – Values, Skills, Talents

Legacy and Story

So, What’s a Story?

Legacy 1: TELL Your Story

Legacy 2: GATHER Their Stories

Legacy 3: CREATE New Stories

Legacy and Sex

A Male or Female Approach?

Legacy and Money

Everyone’s a Philanthropist

Your New Dance Partners!

The Giving Tools

Legacy 9 to 5

Am I the Person My Dog Thinks I Am?

Getting Started

Your Legacy Journal

The First 10 Steps

Legacy FAQs

Your Legacy Smile 2.0

Resources and Free Stuff

Free Legacy Starter Download

Legacy Forum

Search Terms

Acknowledgments

About the Author

What They Say

"Robb Lucy not only convinces us that we can make our lives better by creating our own legacies, he shows us how to do it. Legacies Aren’t Just for Dead People is a must read for anyone seeking to live a more fulfilling life and desiring to leave a lasting legacy.

Boe Workman, CEO Communications,

American Assoc. of Retired Persons (AARP)

I couldn’t believe how it caught my interest. You explained how beneficial our Legacies would be to future generations and how to get started. It’s easy to read with a humorous touch, great stories, and a sense of urgency. A terrific book.

Wilf Wilkinson, Past President – Rotary International

The book is fantastic for those of us well down our path of life. But Lucy’s strategies will be even more influential for my 20 year old and his generation. Awareness of legacies at their stage in life is powerful.

Ted Singeris, President, Mercer Canada

Robb’s book is a generous legacy from a generous man. He gives the reader a tool - a roadmap - to ponder, probe and plan how to use our gifts and skills to have meaningful impact in the world. How wonderful a gift this is!

Barbara Grantham, CEO, VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation

This book is packed with insights, humour and practical guidance that will help you craft your personal Legacy and story… and appreciate its value for everyone, now and in the future.

Ross Mayot, VP & GM, Canadian Assoc. of Retired Persons (CARP)

Lucy has invented a discipline too often left to guys with tall hats, beards, or preachy voices. His book contains many of his notable qualities: explosive brilliance, wit, grace, originality and constant surprises.

Keith Spicer, Journalist & Author, Paris, France

"I was hooked from the opening story. Robb Lucy has a way of grabbing hold of you and not letting go. He writes with great urgency, humor and intimacy. This is a treasure chest of ideas on the most important personal journey you will ever embark upon. You’ll be delighted.

Jim Kouzes, coauthor -The Leadership Challenge

Robb is mad for Legacies. You could call him a zealot. And he wants you to create one.

Reader’s Digest

This book reminds me that if I know my values, skills and passion, my Legacy can be the same as thousands of others. I don’t have to worry that it’s been done before.

Jenny Marcus, National Director, PGI’s for Literacy

…a thoughtful and heartfelt exploration of the importance of making your Legacy an important consideration in your everyday life.

Robert Galford, Center for Leading Organizations

A very good, punchy read. I enjoyed doing the self-evaluation (values, skills, talents), and know that creating my legacy now - big or small - is excellent advice.

Mike Harcourt, Premier of British Columbia, 1991-96

What I Say

Years ago, the thought of leaving a Legacy confused and saddened me. I thought I had to be rich to leave a Legacy? Um… no, not there yet.

Famous? Nope.

And, I’m not dead yet, which is when most people hear about their mark on life from their eulogist!

Then life blind-sided me. My wife and I lost our only chance of having a family. Both my parents died. Then one morning the doctor called and told me I had cancer. I’d never have a chance to leave a Legacy. I mean, what could it possibly be?

I started researching, questioning, and wondering. What really is a Legacy? Does it have to be about money or fame? Will I only know what mine is when everyone at my funeral nods in agreement – Yup, that’s his Legacy, alright.

Or can regular people like me create Legacies that positively affect lives, now and later?

Philosophers and thinkers have taught for eons that all we need to be happy and lead more connected, fulfilled, and meaningful lives is to live by our values, using our talents and skills.

Connected? Fulfilled? Meaning? Yikes! Those are big goals. But now I know your new Legacies will help you achieve them.

This book will act as your Legacy guide. After looking at how Legacy is reflected in a variety of aspects of our lives (e.g. Who can leave them? Time? Ego? Religion? Sex? Money?), I’ll teach you simple formulas for building one, or many, Legacies. They might change your life, your neighborhood, or the world!

In my seminars people said Tell us stories of what others have done. Those stories are here. They’ll have you saying That gives me an idea!

I’ll demystify and redefine Legacy to make it less daunting, more do-able and enjoyable. You’ll begin to experience the joy of giving, connecting and affecting lives with your Legacies.

I wrote this because people were asking What can my Legacy be? I sensed a yearning to find a way to build and enjoy a meaningful life. So, when you’re asked, What will your Legacy be?, I promise you’ll have an answer that puts a broad Legacy Smile on your face. And you won’t have to be rich, or famous… or dead!

Introduction

What’s it all About... Alfie?

Before you begin reading, please hum along with Dionne Warwick and me from the 1966 film, Alfie.

What’s it all about... Alfie

Is it just for the moment we live

What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie

Are we meant to take more than we give

Or are we meant to be kind... Alfie?

When I heard this song in the ‘60s it planted a few musical seeds in my brain. Are we meant to take more than we give? Are we meant to leave something behind? Something that says, I was here. I’m leaving this for you. And I feel good about it.

These questions, pure and simple, are the questions of Legacy. But before delving in too deeply, let me tell you where the examination of Legacy really began for me.

After years of trying, and with the help of medical science, my wife, Kim, was finally pregnant. We were ecstatic. I would soon be a father. We walked into the clinic and I held my wife’s hand while the nurses prepared the equipment so we could glimpse, onscreen, our six-week-old fetus.

Hey, could you fix it so it’s twins, a boy and a girl? I gushed. We’ve got names for them already!

Not this time, smiled the nurse, but maybe next go-round.

This room was alive with energy and anticipation. We were ready for the first view of our little baby. We looked up to the screen.

After a moment, the nurses stopped talking. There was complete silence. The next moment, the energy and joy was sucked out of the room by a big, unseen vacuum.

What’s wrong? said Kim.

No heartbeat, a nurse replied.

You ask dumb questions at this point. What’s that mean…? I said. But we knew.

We cried as we drove home. I held Kim’s hand. We’re not going to have a family, she said through her tears.

Don’t worry, we’ll get there. I love you. We’ll get pregnant, I said. "We are having a family."

But over the next couple of years, with all the drugs and science and needles that modern medicine could give us, it wasn’t to be. My wife and I wouldn’t be parents. I wouldn’t be the father I always wanted to be. I wouldn’t have a daughter to protect and spoil, or a son to teach how to throw a baseball and fly-fish. And, because I was the only son in my family, our proud Lucy name would disappear. We would have no children to leave our estate to. I wouldn’t be able to leave a Legacy. It seemed so unfair. My life’s Legacy had to be about more than having a family.

A few months later, I was walking on the beaches of Normandy with my aging father, retracing his steps from World War II. We visited many of the spots in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany where very good things and very bad things had happened. It was a trip filled with rich memories for father and son.

The following November, my father was asked to speak about his heroic, story-rich experience of World War II in front of his granddaughter’s (my niece’s), grade 5 class. The next time I saw him I asked, How did it go?

Not as well as I would have liked, he said.

Dad wasn’t a natural storyteller, and stories were what those ten-year-old kids needed to hear. Over the next year, Dad and I structured 24 stories; every one had the potential to be a movie.

Dad then wrote out each story by hand, including the story of his best friend being killed beside him and the story of receiving the Military Cross from Field Marshal Montgomery. He told the stories of riding into towns in France, Belgium and Holland as victors who freed those cheering people and changed their lives. We reviewed and rewrote the stories. I typed them into my computer and handed them to my sister, Kathy, a publisher.

We launched my father’s book at a military museum. He was a humble and joyful man, and I could feel the immense pride he felt with his story finally in the hands of friends, family and all who wanted a great read.

That book is part of my dad’s Legacy. The book is being passed on from generation to generation. I know someone in the future will say, This is my great, great, great grandfather’s story!

After this experience, I started to raise the idea of Legacy wherever I was. During polite dinners at home, in a restaurant, on a hike and even once while kayaking on the azure Pacific, I asked everyone the same question: If you ‘left’ tomorrow, what do you think your Legacy would be?

I’ve been too busy to think about it, they’d say. We’ve got our kids. I’ll get to it later. We don’t have the resources or money. Even my fellow kayakers started paddling faster. Get rid of the Legacy guy. He’s weird.

We all know Legacy is about leaving stuff behind. But what? Everyone I asked was unsure or hesitant, but there was real interest. Will I be remembered for anything of value? Will my life have meaning? Will others benefit because I was here?

I could understand the reluctance. Legacy is laden with many weighty ideas: generosity, happiness, relationships, meaning of existence, purpose, love. To combine all that into something we create and enjoy now, which we will leave behind to benefit others. Phew. Tall order.

The lyrics of Alfie became a study of Legacy, which I found out is a BIG subject. But I learned (again) that, like most things in life, simplicity is the key. I have always told those I worked with, "It’s hard to be simple." But, when you get it right, you have greater perspective and enthusiasm to move forward.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each one of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

– Robert Kennedy

Robb: Or every generation?

I invite you to jump into the future with me. Let’s say, a hundred years from now your relatives are talking about you (Great, Great, Great Grandma, or Great, Great, Great Uncle Herb). They’re talking about a Legacy of yours that still resonates in their lives. It doesn’t matter what that Legacy is (and you’ll learn a gazillion options in this book), but they’re talking about the story of your Legacy. That story keeps carrying on.

With this book, you will be able to create that story, that Legacy, once, twice, ten or twenty times.

My first career was as a journalist. Every journalist learns to tell a story with the W5+H. That’s: Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. I want to start here to show you how this book will work for you.

WHO... is this book for?

It’s for anyone who has ever thought, Hmm… do I want to leave a mark on the world? Do I want others to benefit from my time here? Do I want to be happier now? Do I want my life to have meaning?

I’m one of 80 million baby boomers asking these questions. But creating a Legacy isn’t only for those born between 1946 and 1964. I’ve met many Gen Xs (1965-85) and Gen Ys (1985-2004) who are asking the same questions. The greatest fear for many of us is that we lead a life that turns out to be… well, meaningless, uneventful, uninspiring.

People in my seminars had a hunger. Tell me what I can do. Inspire me! I want to ensure my life has meaning.

This book is for people of any age who:

Wonder what their Legacy will be.

Want to feel