What will be your legacy?

[Motivation_Follows_Action]

I was thinking about this today and wanted to share... especially for anyone who's not quite decided to give up yet.. maybe someone caught in the web of adderall deception and thinks "one day" they'll be able to stop the insanity and conquer Life...

In my life, I have been really privileged to hear from some of the world's greatest leaders... from Jack Welsh to Mayor Bloomberg to Colonel Majors in the Royal Airforce to that woman who sailed around the world by herself, etc etc.

One of them (you can guess) said once to our group, in kind of a throwaway way, that the thing that drives him every day is to think about the legacy created by his actions. He said he can't be responsible for making people happy, but he can be responsible for knowing what it is that gives him the greatest happiness, and guess what... it's not about shopping or power or status. It's about a legacy of giving... having impact in the world.

Each day, we are each creating our legacy. The people we come in contact with will remember us. They will remember their connection with us, the intuitive sense they had about us as people (trustworthy, honest, smart, funny or whatever), the impact we had on their lives. They won't remember how brilliant that powerpoint or excel spreadsheet was; they won't care how perfectly worded that email was. What they will remember is whether they felt listened to, remembered, cared about.

When I was in the final days on adderall, I didn't realize how much I was just not connecting with people in any sense of the word. I could have walked away from a conversation and not recalled three things someone had said, and honestly, I could have cared less. I had other, more important things to do (what, exactly, I can also not recall). Either that or I'd spend the entire conversation wondering what the other person thought of me. Regardless, every conversation was always about me. All about me.

I think I'd like my legacy to be not about me. And the only way that's going to happen is to stay off the adderall, and stop thinking about myself, shopping, being the smartest/wittiest/most perfect person in the room. I'd like to get to know people, and hear their stories. And maybe along the line to help someone. Can I achieve that on adderall? No way.