I have the privilege of sitting down with

very externally successful people

providing coaching, and I love my job.

It's a great thing. I will tell you that

I hear very similar comments

from people as they talk and they share regrets,

which they do with me. And some of those regrets

that I hear consistently are that they wish they were

living their own life, their own purpose, and not a purpose of other

people, not pleasing other people, living true to themselves.

They wish that they weren't workaholics, and they wish

they didn't give so much of their time to their job. They

wish that they could express their feelings and that people would

know how they feel, their good and their negative feelings, but they wish they had

the courage to tell people that they appreciate them and encourage

them. They wish that they were— that they had stayed

in better touch with their friends, like that they had the friendships that they so

desire, where they're honest with people and they're connected with people. And

they, they wish they would let themselves be happier.

Interestingly enough, I read a book after I've heard this stuff

for 20 years, these themes from people when they share their true feelings

with me. That I found a

book called The Five Top Regrets of the Dying. And it just, you

know, confirmed what I had heard for so long. I do make this

recommended reading for clients. And her experience

with people are those five regrets that I

hear from others and have heard from other people. And

we're going to talk about breaking out of this. It's actually not get to the

end of your life where you actually regret the decisions that you have made and

have not made. Because not making a decision is a decision.

Not making a decision is a decision. You're just avoiding. You're

going to have excuses as to why you didn't make that decision, but you still

made by default a decision. So today, we're going to talk about

creating a legacy plan, a plan that guides your future.

The journey we take clients on is called the Legacy Journey. So you're going to

get some simple, practical tools and concepts. And

even though it may seem complicated as I share it right now, it's really not

going to be that complicated. But you're still probably going to want to avoid some

of the stuff that I'm going to share. And you can share this content with

your 6-year-old child, and they're going to actually understand

it. I sat down with two good friends yesterday. They're two of my

monkeys. Alan and Brent, and both of them have

made massive career— or actually, one is contemplating, one

has made a massive career change. They're both engineers by training. One's

a chemical engineer and one, I believe, is more of a structural engineer.

And they both have decided they want to become

clinical therapists in their 50s. Pretty

cool. And one of them actually is. But I look at that and I say,

man, you know, for Brent, it's taken him 10 years to get there. Or

more. 15 years ago, I was talking to Brent about this change. But they

all started— they both started, and one's formulating a plan, one's engaging a

plan, but it's all planned. It's a bigger plan for their

future. So today I'm pretty excited

because, you know, I notice people that they have

anxiety and fear and the stuff that holds them back, and they're stuck. I mean,

they just don't know what to do. But that fear, if you look at

it accurately, it's telling you that you need to do,

in most cases, some more planning. And not only do you need to

do more planning, but you need to engage your plan and share your plan and

revise your plan. But you need— and it's this powerful thing

where you step back from your life and you actually contemplate what

you want, and you start to formulate a way to get

there. How exciting is that? That's not self-preservation.

That's not staying safe. That's going

big. And so there's nothing more damaging to your mental health than playing it

small, than staying safe. There's nothing long-term— and that's what we're talking about here is

long-term— there's nothing more empowering than facing the core

issues that are holding you back. And that is a brave, brave thing. That's like

being in the front lines in military combat. I mean, that's a

brave thing to go back and face the junk that you've avoided for so

long. I'm going to give you 3 different decisions that you can make to

create this plan for your future. So, welcome to the Decide Your Legacy

Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Gragg. I founded Decide Your Legacy

in 2012. And what we do is we take

leaders and their business teams and we help them engage and face

the core issues holding them back so they can make long-term change. We're

not in the business of short-term change, of Band-Aids. Now, I've been

a clinician, a licensed family therapist for

27 years since 1999. I think that's 27 years,

yes. And I have issues at times with the way people go

about helping people with their mental health, because are they being honest with them? Are

they facing the core issues holding them back? So everything we do is

non-clinical, it's coaching. Everything we do is challenging people to

face this stuff so they can make changes that stick.

I want to help you make changes that stick. If you listen to this episode,

you're going to be challenged to make changes in your life that are going to

stick and change your life forever. Pretty cool.

So first decision that I challenge you to make if you want to create this

plan for your future is to start creating the freaking

plan. Okay? Start carving out time in

your schedule where you can listen to some relaxing

music, engage in some meditation, engage in a hobby,

do something fun, and start to write down the answers to

some really powerful questions to start to think

about what you want. What are those powerful questions? I'm going to share with you.

You're getting some secrets to my madness right here. One of the

first questions I ask any client is, who are your

monkeys? Who do you have in your corner that are going to back you up

and that's on your side? And a monkey is somebody that's going to do that..

If you don't know what a monkey is, I mean, it's not a negative in

a negative sense at all. There's somebody that has your back that decreases the stress

in your life, that helps you to move forward, that's going to challenge you

and be honest with you. They're an ACE. There's

somebody— an ACE is somebody, it's an acronym for somebody that

accepts you and they challenge you and they encourage you. There's someone that's going

to be honest with you. They're not going to just sit back and tell

you it's all okay for their own sense of comfort. They're not going to

enable you, which in the next episode we're covering the difference

between enabling and harming. Enabling and harming, they're very—

I mean, enabling is harming. I'm sorry, enabling

versus helping. Helping. But your monkeys are going to help you. They're helping you move

forward. So you can identify, and if you don't have any, start making some, because

that's gonna be— it's gonna be impossible to succeed in your life without

good friends. Absolutely impossible. In fact, it will, it will end your life early without

good friends. But are you, are you a good friend to other people? It's what

you got to ask yourself. So who are your monkeys? Second question, starting your

plan and doing this self-reflection, are you brave enough to do it, is what is

your ideal future? In 5 years, in 10 years, in

25 years, in 50 years, what is your ideal future? Are you

living for wealth preservation and self-preservation? Or

are you living for health preservation, which I would say is a

healthy thing? I find sometimes people are more concerned about their wealth than their

own physical health. That's That's a huge regret. 20 years down

the road, they have all this money. But I will tell you that if you

have a $300 million net worth and you don't have your health, you would

give every freaking dime plus a loan for another $100 million to have your

health back. You would. You would give every freaking dime to have your

health back. And I've sat with countless people who don't have their health

at the end of their lives and they have all the wealth they want, but

they don't have relationships. With their kids, with their friends.

You know, if you don't have great relationships with your kids and you're more concerned

about your wealth, that's a really

big problem. And I know people and have met people with

extraordinary net worth that do not prioritize their wealth. They

prioritize their health at a much higher level. It's not the next home they're going

to own, it's the next relationship they're going to build and the next person they're

going to encourage. That attracts me

to them. That attracts everyone to them because they're not in that game. You know,

I tell people if they ask me sometimes like, well, Adam, how much money do

you want? And I don't have a specific goal. The main goal that I have

as far as money is to have enough to do the things that I want

to do that can impact other people's lives, to move

very quickly. I find wealthy people with a healthy aspect, healthy orientation towards

money, they don't talk about it. They don't talk about it except as an

instrument to make decisions quickly, to to impact other

people's lives. And you may be listening to this and say, well, Adam, you don't

have $50 million. Well, first of all, you don't know if I have $50 million

or not. But if I did, or

if I do, I don't want that as something that's a status symbol. I want

that as something to move the needle, to move the

needle forward, to help other people. And it's temptation.

It's a temptation to want to play it safe.. It's a temptation to want to

get to the place where I don't have to worry about money, but I don't

ever want to be at that place. And even if I do have

tons of money, I would hope and pray that I'm still living as

if that's not my identity and that's not what

I care about, rather than having money to move

the needle forward and to impact people's lives. So the third question is, how do

I add value to other people's lives? How do I like myself to say, Man,

I am in a privileged position to add value to people's lives, and I want

to use that to the full extent. This is God-given

ability I've been blessed with based on my life experiences, based on the

challenges I face, based on my draws, what I'm interested in, and I want to

use that to the fullest extent. Fourth question is, what do I need

each day to thrive? And this is all creating your plan. So each day I

know I need risk and accomplishment. I need risk, accomplishment,

challenge. And at the end of the day, I want to reflect on how I've

engaged people in a way where I've made a difference

and I've gained— and it's not even what happened during that day. I've taken risks

and I've failed. I've messed stuff up because I've tried, but

I've done things and I've moved forward. And that's made a difference in

my life and other people's lives as well. The sixth question is, what's my

purpose in life? What is it that I've been drawn to, uniquely called to do

in this world? So for me and for Decide Your Legacy, our

purpose is helping leaders and their teams face the core issues

holding them back to make long-term life transformations. I mean, that's it. I

want to help people face stuff to go big,

to challenge themselves. You know, another way, and another really important question, which I need

to cover in another podcast, that's a part of this plan, and it may sound

contradictory, but I ask people and I help people to identify— we help people, my

team, we help people identify what is it that you believe about yourself

that harms you? And what's a new story that you can write based

on outlying information related to that thing that you believe about yourself that

harms you? You know, other situations where that didn't come to play. You know, I

tell myself a lot of times, like, and this is my natural default, don't

have the hard conversation. You know, don't have the

hard conversation. Avoid, avoid, avoid. But then I look at outliers and think, well, hey,

you know, the story that I'm writing in my life means that I'm addressing the

core issues in other people's lives. And in my own life, I have to lead

the way. And that's what leads to change. And that's what leads to transformation. That's

what leads to really going big in your life. So what can you do

about this? Well, you can start today by blocking out an hour of time in

your schedule to do the reflection that's necessary to create

the plan. If you're telling yourself, well, I don't know what to do with my

time, or I got to go do this, I could do that, I got to

take my time to do this activity, you know, they don't have— I don't have

time to actually sit and self-reflect. Well, that's time that's

going to be wasted doing things that are not the most essential

things because you don't have time not to step back from your life and

create a plan. It's going to save you countless hours by having a

plan than by avoiding taking the time to actually get

to know yourself. It's a scary thing to get to know yourself. You

can justify, rationalize, minimize, avoid all kinds of stuff. You can just tell

yourself and you can play the victim card. And that's all avoidance

of facing your core issues. So the second decision is

you start creating this plan, and then you also build intentionally into

your life a chance and time to focus on your plan. 15

minutes a day will make a huge difference in your life. So you have

this plan created, and then fear tells you to not focus on it, to stay

away from it, to just tuck it away. I'm not gonna look at that. You

know, it's like a financial plan that you avoid. If you just avoid it, then

you're gonna make decisions based on emotion not

based on creating, creating systems in your life where you're saving money, creating systems in

your life where you're investing money, creating systems in your life where you're giving money.

You're creating a plan. So take the time. Most people will

never do this. I know most of you will tune out. I mean, that's just

the way it is because self-preservation is so incredibly strong. Listening

to this kind of podcast is going to trigger in you some anxiety that's going

to say like, I don't want to deal with this kind of stuff, or even

that negativity like, what does Adam know? He doesn't really know about this stuff. Look,

you know, come on. But hey, you know, yeah, I mean, you

may not know what I know. You may have easily be easy. It may be

easy to judge me. Because that's self-preservation. That's

your own fear talking. Judgment is putting somebody else

in a category in a box. So I don't have to actually look at things

from a big picture, holistic point of view. I didn't want to listen to what

they have to say. I don't want to hear what they have to say. This

is what caused causes polarization politically. Because somebody

just has one opinion that you don't like, you're— they're not able

to think clearly. I mean, I mean, you're judging them, but you're the one not

able to think clearly. I mean, because you're judging them and drawing conclusions without

even getting to know them, without even getting to

know them, and not seeing them as a person, not seeing them as

somebody with value, but seeing them as an enemy just for the sake

of your own safety. So you'll never

do this. Most people won't do this. Most people won't go back and review it.

Most people won't even sit down and create the plan. If you do this, I'm

going to start admiring you right away. I mean, you, because you've

done something that takes courage to have the time to step back, to create

the time to step back and self-reflect. I like to read through it in the

morning, first thing in the morning. I like to read through my legacy plan, which

I have a legacy plan, and I'm happy to share with you my legacy plan

if you ask me. I do share it more and more with people. I share

it with clients and people interested in hiring Decide Your Legacy as a coach. I

share it with people that are friends. I ask for feedback and I

want to look at it every day to see how aligned I

am to it. It's a really big deal. So I want to share it with

trusted monkeys. That's part of my focusing on the plan. So you start focusing

on who your monkeys are. You start focusing on who your ideal, what your

ideal future actually is. You start focusing on how you add value

to people's lives. You start focusing on how you need to thrive each day and

you start focusing on your life purpose. You start focusing on the new story

for your future. And that's what's happened with Alan and Brent as they've

thought about becoming clinicians and coaches, because I believe both of them

will be great coaches as well. But they don't work for me, but maybe

they will in the future for us, Decide Your

Legacy, that is. But they started to rewrite the story

and they have started to focus on this newer story and it's

given them courage to face these situations because they know that this bigger

future in 25 years and 10 years and 5 years is worth it. And it's

so much more important that they have this impact that God's called them to have

than playing it safe. And so that negativity has much less power. It's not

that they don't actually have to hear that voice in their head

of negativity and fear and anxiety, but the voice of hope and

truth and moving forward and pushing forward is getting stronger and stronger each day. And

I see it. So if you found this podcast helpful so far, you're

gonna love Shatterproof Yourself Light. Hit the link to Shatterproof Yourself Light, go

through this content, super powerful. There's worksheet content to that,

and you're gonna create and engage 7 brave

steps to creating and to going bigger in your future, to creating

a plan, to making your life shatterproof, more resilient. So

the third step in creating a plan and creating your legacy plan, first one

is you start creating it, second one is you focus on it, the third one

is you use it. So you look at your plan and you start

evaluating your alignment on a scale of 1 to 10 in each area. So if

you look at this going, this 10-year future

that you want, this ideal future, and you say, well, how aligned is

my— are my decisions today to get me there on a scale of 1 to

10? And you have to be honest and say, well, it's a 2 because I'm

not doing this stuff. I'm just dreaming. Or you can say it's a

5, or you can say it's a 7. I mean, how aligned

are you to doing and utilizing the God-given

natural talents, unique abilities that you have on a scale of 1 to 10? Are

you doing it? Are you taking action based on it? If it's a 3, then

it's going to challenge you and inspire you to make some changes in your life,

to go bigger with your life, and to start orienting your schedule and

start orienting your decisions and aligning them with your legacy plan. So

you look at it, you gain awareness,

and then I would encourage you to share it as well. That's part of using

it is you're sharing it and asking your monkeys, how does my life

seem to align with this plan that I've created for my life? Or what adjustments

would you suggest that I make? And that is a brave thing. You don't have

to take their advice on it, but you're trusting them enough to give you

feedback and ask you challenging questions and to challenge your alignment

in those areas. If you don't have a plan, you'll be influenced by your

emotions. You'll do what feels safe and what feels comfortable.

Over time, that will drain your life, and it'll lead to a life that you

regret at the end of your life, because you'll look back and say, I could

have done so much more. I could have had those friendships.

I could have engaged in those friendships. You

know, because I know that a lack of friendships is a top

regret of people towards the end of their life, I'm not willing to go down

that path. So I invite a lot. I invite a lot, and I get

rejected more than most people. I get ghosted more than most people. I can

guarantee you this week I'll get ghosted and rejected by a dozen people,

but that's only because I don't take that personally the same

way I used to. If I invite people to go do something and they don't

want to reach out and say hello or whatever, that's okay.

If I invite someone to get lunch, that's okay. It's not

a reflection of me. I know I add value because I focus on my plan

and I focus on my history. I focus on the decisions I've made. I know

that I bring something to the table, and that may sound kind of

arrogant, but it's not to me because I know that it can

be helpful to other people. So why not use this plan? Why not

use this life I've been given? I've only got one life. I

don't want you to look at this and listen to this podcast and end up

somewhere you don't want to go based on your fear. I don't want you to

end up living someone else's purpose and not the purpose you've been called to live.

I don't want you to end up being consumed by money and

being consumed by eventually your poor health because you've neglected it,

or consumed by codependent relationships that are draining you and sucking the life out of

you rather than getting into these healthy monkey relationships. I don't want you

to live someone— I don't want you to get to the end of life where

you don't have a plan, or you've realized that you've spent

your life preserving wealth and not engaging and using your

wealth for good. I don't want that to happen to you. That's a very dangerous

place to live. That's a very dangerous way to live. So,

in review, you create your plan, you focus on your plan, and you

use your plan. And, you know, this is why I created Decide

Your Legacy. In 2010 is when I started dreaming about it, even

before that. 2012, I started it. And one of the first things I ever did

was create a little game. And I did this before I started the

business called the Legacy Jar. We're getting ready to launch our third version of

the Legacy Jar. And the reason that is something I want to share right now

is because that is a jar full of questions to ask your friends

and family and coworkers, and it gets you thinking about the most important stuff in

your life. And it's that stuff that's going to change your life

if you're willing If you're willing to engage in the hard conversations, it's going to

change your life. I've seen it. And I want to see it

in your life. And I want to see it in my friends' lives. And I

want to see it in my neighbors' lives. I don't want

to see safety. Safety— if I look at people in my

life, and people historically that I admire, they didn't play it safe.

They didn't live that way. And it ended up having a huge

impact on other people. So let

that be you. So what insight have you gained today, and what actions are you

going to commit to taking based on this content? What are you going

to apply? You have to decide and act and then repeat. So

80% of transformational change is action, 20% or

probably less is insight. You know, today you gained insight, hopefully. What are

you going to apply? So commit to doing something and tell somebody

about it. To decide means you're eliminating other options. You're saying like, of

all these different paths I can take today based on content that I have, I'm

going to commit to this one thing. Your legacy is the impact your

life is having and has on other people. And there's no

positive change until you decide to change. Decide

today because your legacy depends on it. Your legacy depends on it. So I'm

going to close the way I always do. Make it your mission to live the

life today that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone.

You decide your legacy. Nobody else. I appreciate you

greatly, and I'll see you next time.