Impactful Footprints: The Power and Meaning of Legacy

Have you ever paused to wonder what legacy you're leaving behind? The beautiful thing about legacies is that they're not solely confined to tangible assets or wealth. They can be our ethics, values, and the profound impact we make on the lives we touch. My own life has been shaped by the legacy of my grandmother, Nancy, whose boundless love for animals inspired my journey to living on a farm and creating an animal rescue as well as my Grandmother, Ruth, who had a love and passion for baking that shaped my future and helped me become the person I am today. Discover the power of legacy, and how it can be unintentionally passed down through generations, shaping futures in ways unimaginable.

What if your legacy could go beyond material wealth and resonate through time in the hearts and minds of those you've touched?  Let's rethink what it means to leave a legacy. Remember, it's not just what we leave for people, but what we leave in them. Come, join me on this inspiring journey of introspection, where we'll redefine legacy, shaping it with our passions, purpose, and the impact we make on the world.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Today we're going to dive into legacy. What does a legacy look like for you? What does it look like in your life and what does it mean for you? Let's get this thing going. Welcome to the Farm to Heart Podcast, a podcast for heart-centered entrepreneurs and dreamers alike seeking to plant their seeds and grow a life of alignment, purpose and their own version of joy filled success. I'm Sarah Rutter, a former award-winning bakery owner, turned mama, animal rescuer and multi-passionate entrepreneur with a desire to help others ignite their dreams and create a life they love without the burnout. So, whether you're seeking guidance on personal growth, launching or growing your current business, or simply looking for inspiration to ignite your entrepreneurial spirit, this podcast will be your loyal companion. So join me as we plant the seeds of your dreams, nurture their growth and cultivate a life of purpose, abundance and fulfillment. So saddle up and let's go Hello and welcome back.

Speaker 1: 1:07

What do you think of when you think about leaving a legacy? Does that word make you anxious? Does it make you inspired? Is it a word that you don't even think of very often? What goes through your head when you think about leaving a legacy?

Speaker 1: 1:23

The definition of legacy is actually pretty simple. The definition is something that is passed on, which can be anything. Really, a legacy can take many forms. It can be one's faith. It can be in a monetary form. It can be your assets, like a house or land. It can be a person's character or their ethics or their core values. It could even be your reputation and the way that you lived life and the impact that you left behind when you pass away. So the truth is, to put it simply, we will all leave a legacy. It doesn't matter if we're trying to, it doesn't matter if we're intending it in a certain way. We will all leave some sort of legacy here on this earth, and whether we are married or we're single, or whether we have kids or we don't, we will all leave a legacy in some fashion and in some way, and for whatever reason. Legacy keeps popping into my life the last several weeks, just the word and the idea around it. So I thought I might as well make it into a podcast episode, because it seems to be a theme in my life, but really it's a theme in everybody's lives and it has so much to do also with us living in our purpose and living in our passions and pursuing our dreams, because that often is what makes our legacy so powerful, and it doesn't have to be leaving a huge lump sum of money to our kids or our kids. Kids, like our legacy, can be just impact. It's the footprints that we're leaving on the ground with the changes that we want to see made in this world. It's the thoughts in our heads that we put out on paper and we write and we make into songs and we write into poems or podcast episodes or anything. It's truly just like an open-ended way of leaving our impact on this earth.

Speaker 1: 3:46

And I heard someone say the other day that when we have children, that we are actually parenting our children's children. So we are parenting our grandkids while we are also parenting our kids at the same time. And I cannot get that out of my head because it is so true and I see that so much in my family and just like the legacy that my grandparents left to my parents which are now part of the legacy that I'm leaving to, to Brett and to any future kids that I might have so much of my life already has been because of the legacies that my grandparents left. Like my grandmother on my dad's side Her name is Grandma Nancy. She loved animals, loved animals. She would buy corn and grain and stuff to feed to the wild turkeys and the wild animals In Nebraska. They lived right on like McConaughey in Ogallala and she would be constantly feeding the wild animals and she would buy, like McDonald's, cheeseburgers to feed her dog and she was taking in homeless animals all the time and helping injured animals. And that is such a huge part of my life and it always has been.

Speaker 1: 5:18

I literally was the little girl that would pick dead squirrels off the middle of the road and put them in a box and try to bring them back to life, and if I couldn't, then we would have a memorial service for them. In our backyard we constantly had birds that had fallen out of nests or been ran into a window or got injured in some way, and those birds would end up in my parents house and I would try to nurse them back to health. And I had horses growing up and we've always had dogs and cats, and so it was just. It was something that was instilled into my dad growing up for his love of animals and that has been put into me. And now here I am, living on a farm with rescued horses and rescued chickens and rescued dogs and I am trying to withhold from feeding the wild animals because that can create a whole other set of issues in our area of the mountains, but it is tempting. I do want to throw some oats and stuff for the wild turkeys because they are really awesome, but I am trying not to so.

Speaker 1: 6:34

But I mean, I have that spirit in me and that legacy was passed on to my whole family, to my sister and I and my brother. We all love animals and it's just something that I can look back and clearly pinpoint like, yes, that was my grandma, nancy, she passed that on and that was the biggest thing that I remember about her. She unfortunately passed away when I was pretty young, but I just know, and I will always know, that her love for animals because it was so clear and evident in all that she did and that was a legacy that she left and maybe she didn't even know she was leaving it. Maybe that wasn't her intention to pass that on for generations, but she did and I'm so, so grateful for it. I love that part of me, I love that part of my family and I just love looking back on her love of animals too and seeing where it all originated.

Speaker 1: 7:31

And then on my mom's side, my grandma Ruth. She is from Norway, our family is Norwegian and We've always just grown up baking everything really but baking Norwegian cookies and Norwegian desserts of all kinds and so I can clearly pinpoint with her where my love of baking began, and because of her she passed that on to my mom, who then passed on that love of baking to my sister and I, and so I can confidently say that without grandma Ruth's legacy of her love for baking being passed down to my mom, that I would have never started gold mine cupcakes and that portion of my life would have never taken place and I would not be the same person that I am today. So that is a huge legacy that was passed down and that I am so grateful for. It's just, it's amazing when you actually like sit back and think about things that you love or things in your life that you're passionate about right now, and where that legacy actually originated and where it came from. And I really love thinking about both my grandmothers and because they've both passed away now and I just love like knowing that that part of me lives on from both of them and that I have like pieces of them inside of me, whether, like I said, whether or not they intended to pass that stuff on as their legacy. But I love those pieces of me and I love that that is a legacy that I'm continuing to pass on, and I can't wait to just teach Brett all about baking. He already loves baking cookies with me and he already loves feeding the chickens and petting the horses, and so I just am so grateful for that part of the legacy that was passed on in my family to my parents, who then passed it on to us.

Speaker 1: 9:40

And I just think, when you sit back and think about legacy in that way and how it can really just be small things that become a huge part of your heart, it's such a beautiful thing. And when we think about the concept of our purpose and our passions and the connection that those have to leaving a meaningful legacy, I think for me that definitely takes a lot of the pressure off of not just leaving a monetary legacy and I feel like that money is usually the biggest word that revolves around legacy. But, and don't get me wrong, being able to leave a monetary legacy to your children or your children's children is a huge honor and it's something that would be incredible to be able to do, but I can honestly say that that is not my first priority when it comes to leaving a legacy. It is definitely something I want to strive for, but not something that I will stress myself out over throughout my lifetime. For me, it's more. I want my impact and I want my change I guess, hopefully change that I make in people's lives to be my legacy, and my love for animals. And so, yeah, it just takes a lot of the pressure off because I realize if I'm just doing the best that I can with what I feel I'm being called to do in this life and the purposes and passions that I have in this life, then I will leave a legacy, just simply by being me and doing the best that I can, and if that's all that I'm able to leave, then that's great.

Speaker 1: 11:30

I think part of the reason, too, that legacy seems to be popping up in my life recently is because of the unfortunate passings of both Jimmy Buffett and Matthew Perry, and both of those men are people that I was fans of and still am a fan of, and they left such an incredible legacy with both the work that they did but also who they were outside of their work and with their friends and their family, and just the type of people that they were and the impact that they wanted to leave on this world, regardless of what they did for a living, and so they were both very inspiring to me. To just as far as leaving a legacy not because of what you do for a living, but because of who you are and I think, ultimately, that is the goal of leaving a legacy is, who are people going to remember us by and like? When people think of us, are they gonna think of our car that we drove, or are they gonna think of, like, who we were as a person and the way that we touched their heart and the way that we made a difference in the world? And that is what I am striving for. I want people to remember me for the impact that I make and hopefully, just for how I made people feel, and not because of anything that I purchased or anything like that, but because of the way that people and animals felt when they were around me.

Speaker 1: 13:15

And so the same goes with living in alignment and creating a life and a business that are in alignment with your values and your morals. And when people see that and they see that you are truly living into who you were meant to be and that you are living with joy and gratitude, then that is contagious and that is a legacy that gets passed on to anybody that knows you. Really it's just, it's a gift to people to see somebody living in their true passion and their true purpose and following their dreams, because not enough people do it and too many people hold back on those dreams and what their purpose is and they get scared because it is scary. It is scary to go after the unknown and not know if it's gonna work out. But ultimately, whether it works out or not, you're leaving a legacy of just being brave and trying and going for it.

Speaker 1: 14:20

So I encourage you to number one, just to sit down and really think back on some legacies that were passed down in your family. Some of them you may not realize originated a long time ago and now those are things that you have in your life or that are important to you, and some legacies might be something that you started that you are passing on to your children, but I just think it's so important to really sit with those things in your life that you recognize are a legacy that you were either passing down, that started with you or that has been passed down to you from generations before, and just to really sit in gratitude for those, because they're such a big part of what makes us who we are and what we're gonna leave behind when we're no longer on this earth. And then also, if you can't think of any legacies that you have passed down to you, just start thinking about what you want yours to be Really, just start jotting it down, things that are important to you and what you want people to remember you by, and what is the impact that you wanna leave on people's hearts when you're not here anymore to be your legacy. All right, so I hope that was helpful for you. I hope that maybe it put legacy into a different perspective for you.

Speaker 1: 15:50

I would love to hear your feedback on what thoughts this brought up for you, or ideas or stories or anything like that, or just any legacies that you know of that you wanna talk about that were passed down to you from generations before you as well. And I'm just gonna end with a quote here by Shannon Alder. It says carve your name on hearts, not on stone, a legacy, is etched into the minds of others and the stories that they share about you. All right, and I do have a little gift for you. I have some seeds of growth and inspiration, printable cards that you can print out and just kinda place them around your house or whatever you wanna do regarding legacy and growth and joy, and just some affirmations for you to have situated around wherever you would like to have them. So click the link in the show notes to print those out and I will see you guys next week.

Speaker 1: 16:50

Thank you so much for listening today. If you enjoyed the show, please like and subscribe to the podcast on your favorite listening platform. You can also leave a review anytime or send me a DM on Instagram at farmtoheartsara. I would love to hear from you and hear more about your story. You can also help the podcast even more by financially supporting the tech and time costs of each episode, starting at just $3 per month. Click the support the show link in show notes to learn more. Today's show, plus more farm fun, can be found on the blog at sweetfreedomfarmcocom. I can't wait to talk to you again next week. Have a beautiful day, everyone.