If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants - Isaac Newton

What impression do you want to leave with posterity? How do you want to be remembered? What tribute do you want to be paid to you the day you exist this world? What have you done, doing, or planning to do that would outlive your life?

Benjamin Franklin, a Founding Father of the United States of America and a man of multiple hats said “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing."

A Legacy is a gift - money or other personal property passed on to descendants or transmitted by or received from predecessors.

It transcends tangible gifts to value systems, such as good mannerism and morals.

No one can escape the responsibility of leaving a good legacy.

If you can't afford to pass on wealth or properties to the next generation, you can surely transmit good value systems which in most cases matchless.

Your significance in life is not only in doing extraordinary things; but also doing small things in a great way.  See, it is better to do small things extremely well than to do colossal things ineffectively.  As you instill good manners and morals in your kids, you are indirectly influencing countless lives across the globe who would come in contact with them.

In spite of standing at the vestibule of one of the greatest generational wealth transfer, according to empirical evidence.

The average young black person across the globe would be at a great disadvantage compared to his/her Asian and White counterparts.

Interestingly, another research affirms that “African-American and Hispanic families are about five times less likely than white families to inherit money and when they do inherit money they inherit less than white families.”

This is a big disparity, there's therefore a grave need for serious deliberations and discussions on the importance of generational wealth transfer among the communities of black people across the world.

Someone once declared, “I may be here for a short while, gone tomorrow into oblivion or until the days come to take me away. But, in whatever part you play, be remembered as part of a legacy...of sharing dreams and changing humanity for the better. It's that legacy that never dies.”

 It is meaningless to glean the wealth of this whole world without using it to change the lives of the needy and underprivileged.

Likewise, it is irrelevant to have knowledge without transforming the minds of the uneducated and the uninformed.

If you are rich and can’t impact the poor, educated and can’t illuminate the minds of the uneducated, blessed and can’t be a blessing, then your success is without significance and therefore is like clouds without rain; it is empty.

It is not how much you have in life that matters but how much you do with what you have; it is not what you know that counts but what you do with what you know.  In the words of leadership expert, John C. Maxwell, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

One person who demonstrated how much he cared about people is Louis Pasteur, French chemist and microbiologist. Louis Pasteur is a pioneer of immunology, lived at a time when thousands of people died each year of rabies.

He had worked for years on a vaccine. Just as he was about to begin experimenting on himself, a nine-year-old, Joseph Meister, was bitten by a rabid dog. The boy’s mother begged Pasteur to experiment on her son. Pasteur injected Joseph for ten days and the boy lived.

Decades later, of all the things Louis Pasteur could have had etched on his headstone, he asked for three words: Joseph Meister Lived.

Louis Pasteur was a great believer of diligence, being not contented with his laurels, he continued to work very hard in his laboratory to develop more cures. He said in an advice to his fellow scientists, "An individual who gets used to hard work can thereafter never live without it. Work is the foundation of everything in this world."

Our greatest moments in life, would be those that outlive our lives because of our efforts, care, and sacrifice. You were born to affect the course of life in a momentous way and that is where your significance lies. 

Sextus Aurelius Propertius, Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age puts it this way, “Let’s give the historians something to write about.” 

The moment you decide not to live up to your maximum potential in life, you literally short-change the destinies of thousands of people by your action or inaction. Lives of individuals, families, and communities are shuttered because someone choose to gamble with their future and did not deem leaving a legacy a priority.

When you get the baton as a forerunner in your generation, you’re forbidden by virtue of your placement to live ordinarily. You become totally sold out to the cause of outliving your generation positively. Thomas Alva Edison, an American inventor, scientist, and businessman admonished that “If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” 

In this case, we will astonish ourselves and generations to come.

Below are tips you can practically adopt to leave a legacy and place the next generation on your shoulders.

• KNOW YOU ARE A BATON CARRIER - Leaving a great and an impressive legacy requires you to think as a forerunner holding the brief for his /her team with mindset of releasing it to the next runner in a relay race. You give the race your best shot with the winners’ mentality to give the next generation a great start in their race as well.

Indian IT industrialist and co-founder of the multinational corporation, Infosys, N. R. Narayana Murthy opined “When you run a part of the relay and pass on the baton, there is no sense of unfinished business in your mind. There is just the sense of having done your part to the best of your ability. That is it. The hope is to pass on the baton to somebody who will run faster and run a better marathon."

•WILLINGNESS TO WORK EXTRA HARD - You liberate posterity from the grip and threat of poverty as well as servility to socioeconomic systems when you resolve to do more than is required of you. Author, speaker, and the President of The Goals Guy Learning Systems, Gary Ryan Blair believes that “advancement only comes with habitually doing more than you are asked."

• REPOSITION YOURSELF - It enough just working extra hard, doing more than is required of you. You have to know how adjust and re-align your goals and aspirations to suit your destination in life.

From takeoff to landing, airplanes are said to drift off their route severally but with constant repositioning the pilot arrives at the destined location. Someone said, “when you have reached a level in life where you are not challenged and have done the things you wanted to do , you must reposition yourself  to step up to the next level and keep discovering your potential."  As you reposition yourself for the future, you implicitly position your lineage for greatness.

• PREPARE AND POSITION THE NEXT GENERATION - Most times we succeed in our generation but because we fail to set up the next generation. Before you bow out you have ensure you have introduced and prepared someone to step in your shoes to carry on effectively what you are leaving behind. Congolese American retired professional basketball player, Dikembe Mutombo is convinced that   "God put us here to prepare this place for the next generation. That's our job. Raising children and helping the community, that's preparing for the next generation."

• BE AT YOUR BEST AT ALL TIMES - The act of being your best at all times is a prerequisite for forerunners in life.  Excellent is not only a mark on a school exam paper; it is also an attitude required of us to be outstanding in the affairs of life.  We are considered to be excellent when we outperform our peers at school but unfortunately, true excellence is outperforming yourself at any given situation.  In other words, “best your best.”  It is said that, “Excellence can be achieved if you . . . risk more than others think is safe, love more than others think is wise, dream more than others think is practical, and expect more than others think is possible.”

• SET A BENCHMARK - Let your potential be your competitor and your standard.  It is great to be challenged by others but never seek to be like them, be your own original.  Don’t be swayed by the applauds, admiration, and appellation of people when you are seeking to be significant because some times what people see as incredible and excellent from you might not even be a scratch on the surface of your potential.  In most cases, when you look down within your spirit and the potential residing in you, you know you are nowhere near your best.  That is why you don’t need to compete or compare yourself with other people’s achievements.  American singer and actress, Barbara Cook said, “If you're able to be yourself, then you have no competition.  All you have to do is get closer and closer to that essence.”  Let your benchmark become a landmark.

We were all empowered to succeed with an idea, a gift, specialized knowledge, talent, and a dream, so we could also be a significant in the history of humanity; hence, decide to leave a legacy by writing your own eulogy with your life so that when you exist the world, what would be said about you would match with how you lived.

American evangelical Christian evangelist, Billy Graham preached that “Our days are numbered. One of the primary goals in our lives should be to prepare for our last day. The legacy we leave is not just in our possessions, but in the quality of our lives. What preparations should we be making now? The greatest waste in all of our earth, which cannot be recycled or reclaimed, is our waste of the time that God has given us each day.”

 It is extremely imperative to become our best by emptying ourselves of any idea, gift, talent, dream, or potential to make the next generation better than ours. If you came to meet your parent renting a single room in a compound or shared house with all your siblings, you are duty-bound to go beyond what you inherited. If all you could only afford high school level education due to financial constraints, you have to work assiduously to put your children through tertiary education.

If your parent had to scrape few monies here and there trading at the flea market to see you through life to become a professional, you should be challenged to replicate that exponentially in the lives of the next generation.

“Our lives are influenced by those who came before us.  As we honor their memories, we must remember that we, too, are paving the way for those who will follow in our footsteps,” according to Success Magazine. Choose to leave an indelible legacy whether tangible or intangible on the minds and hearts of posterity and you shall be drafted to be among the great. Discover Your Greatness!