Creating a Spontaneous Legacy

Hey, good morning, everybody. Lee Brower here. Welcome to this week's edition of Meaningful Monday. I am grateful to be here, and I am glad to be here. Spontaneous legacy. You know, many people think legacy is something that you leave. I'm going to convince you that it's something that you live. I remember years ago, you remember Zig Ziglar? What a great storyteller.

I remember a story that he told. I've never really seen it in print, and I only heard it once, so I know it must have made an impact on me. But it's all about Mr. Mr. Big. He said, Mr. Big goes to lunch at the country club. He's late as usual. He comes in, he's huffing and puffing. He gets down, sits down, he has this business meeting. They get up eating lunch and they get caught up into business things. And pretty soon they're mingling, you know, and all of a sudden it hits him.

I've got a two o'clock appointment. And so he jumps up, abruptly says goodbye to everybody, rushes out in his big red Cadillac, lays down rubber, zooming to get to the office as fast as he can. And the long arm of the law reaches out and grabs him. And his prize is a ticket. Oh, Mr. Big is mad. He pulls up to the office. He stomps inside and yells for his assistant. Where's that file for my two o'clock appointment? Well, the assistant's caught

off guard. Mr. Big can tell by the look on her face that she was not prepared. But Mr. Big now, you think he was mad before, now he's livid. But as mad as Mr. Big is, his assistant is even more so. She's fuming. She storms into another office and screams at the unsuspecting secretary, blaming her for everything. Oh, but if you think his assistant was mad, you should have seen the secretary. She could not get over it. She fussed and she fumed the rest of the afternoon.

And when she got home, her dog Fido happened to cross her path. And with all the fury of a hurricane, she gave that poor dog one swift kick. Zig Ziglar concluded by saying, Hmm, wouldn't it have been a lot simpler if Mr. Big would have just jumped into his car at the country club and headed directly to his secretary's home and just kicked that dog himself?

Okay, seldom do we see the results of our actions. That's a great example because it seems like negative action seems to build on other negative actions. It seems to be viral. But let's talk about some of the positive things. I remember years ago, our son Bo came. After lunch, he came back by the office, and he said, the craziest thing happened. I went to go through a drive-thru. When I got up there, they told me the car

ahead of me had paid for my lunch, and they were gone. I couldn't tell him thank you, couldn't do anything. I said, what are you going to do about it? He says, well, I bought lunch for the person behind me. You see, it's viral. A couple weeks later, we happened to be at a restaurant with the family, and we were sitting there, and there was a lady and some children, young kids in the next room. They were just making a ruckus. They were making a ruckus.

And so my kids started saying, well, maybe we should go sit someplace else. We're basically, those people shouldn't be in here. I said, well, why don't we do what Bo did? Why don't we buy their breakfast? They're like, what? Let's buy their breakfast. So quietly, we bought their breakfast and we left. We never saw what happened. You see, because if you're creating a spontaneous legacy, you have to do it without expecting anything in return.

And to do that, we had to get out of the restaurant before we saw what happened.

You know, a few years back, we've probably done a couple hundred of these now, or more probably. But a few years back, we were with four of our granddaughters, and they brought their allowance, and we did the same thing. We looked around the room, and I remember one of the girls, look at that couple over there. They don't hardly talk. Let's buy theirs, Papa. Papa, okay, let's think about that. What else do we see? Well, they see this other lady over there. She doesn't have a husband.

Maybe we should buy the heiress. And so we worked with the waitress. We figured out who we were going to buy. And we left. And as we're leaving, they go, Papa, can't we peek back and see what happens? The answer is no. No, we can't. I wanted to look back. But the answer is no. Because let's say we helped this couple that wasn't talking. And the person reacts by saying, What? I think we're poor. We don't have any control over how somebody acts. but we want a spontaneous legacy.

We want it to happen in the moment without expectation and without any comparison. And whether you're buying lunch for a stranger, you're putting a quarter in someone else's parking meeting, what you're doing is you're creating a conversation about how to appreciate what we have and how to share what we have with others.

You know, paying it forward. Some people say, I don't like to pay it forward. I do that, not be creating jobs. No, look, you can pay it forward with just a smile and it's viral by just saying thank you. By going out of your way, you don't even have to give money. It's just in the moment when you create something like that, that becomes viral. It's a spontaneous legacy. It's something that you have left that's going to continue to live on.

By sharing the good with others, we change the thought patterns in the minds of others and we get them to think about about what's great in their lives and how they then can pass along joy to more people. When you do something for others, you are in essence making contributions into your own personal family contribution bank account, your own personal contribution bank account. This is one of those magical accounts that continues to receive deposits each time as you give.

And no matter how many withdrawals are made, it never depletes the account. In fact, it does just the opposite. It's the ultimate viral marketing experience. So once it starts, it's difficult, if not impossible, to know where it might end. It's like tossing a stone into a lake.

The ripples extend outward, but you may never know where they end up. Let's not run into any secretary's house and kick dogs. Let's be out there and let's create spontaneous legacies by our actions of giving to others and the joy of knowing that they're going to be carried out and make ripples wherever they go. Let's have a meaningful week. Let's live life deliberately, live it meaningful, and we'll talk next Monday. Have a great week.