Have you ever stopped to think about who and what you want to be remembered by after you pass? Me neither, at least not until now.
Typically after you pass away and you’re no longer here, your friends and family are the only ones that hold on to memories of you, of a time when you were still present. It’s usually something they did with you, the sound of your laugh, something you always did, or what you would do in a certain situation if you were still here. They can remember you as somebody who was kind and treated others with respect, as somebody that was the life of the party, or even as somebody that was just an ass and hated life. I’m sure for many people this is enough or they simply never stop to think about how they will be remembered.
What do you do though if you want more people to remember you? What do you do if you want to be remembered for more significant things? What do you do if you want to be remembered for having more of an impact on people’s lives?
Well for starters you have to be willing to change. In order to change you have to be repetitive and hold yourself accountable. You can’t wake up everyday and do the same thing you did the day before expecting a different outcome. You also can’t be afraid to fail, it’s our failures that teach us the most. You have to be willing to put in the effort. You can’t try something once and give up because you fail. If you do that you will never learn and if you don’t learn you will not have success. Success literally means the accomplishment of an aim or a purpose. So in other words it’s the decision to do something and not giving up until it’s completed correctly. Guess what, you can only complete something once you’ve learned how to do it. For example, you can’t successfully write your name on a piece of paper unless you first learn what each letter looks like and what order to put them in. Yes there are little things here and there in which you succeed even though it’s the very first time you’ve done it. Typically though, success is more like a reward and you can only receive it after you’ve put in the appropriate amount of time and effort. It’s also proof that you know what you’re doing, and you’ve mastered your skill.
If you want to be remembered for more significant things then you need to be more significant, you’ll have to take risks and be responsible for significant things. You need to stand out. You have to draw in people’s attention, give people a reason to remember who you are. People need to be interested in what you are doing and what you stand for if you want to stand out and be significant. A few examples that come to mind are Vin Diesel for playing Dominic Toretto in the Fast and the Furious series, the Wright brothers for inventing the airplane, or Martin Luther King Jr for the impact he had on American Civil Rights. You don’t have to be a celebrity actor or have a global impact to be significant or more significant though. The same thing applies on a smaller scale. Like if you own a small business and you offer a service that everyone needs but nobody else offers, the quality of your work and the materials you use are so much better than anybody else around, or you own a restaurant and one time you gave somebody a free meal. It’s things like that that make you more significant than anybody else. Being significant more or less means you stand out compared to everyone else. You are more significant and now that person comes to your restaurant and eats every Saturday all because you gave away a free meal one time. What you do, how well you do it, and how often you do it are all things that affect how significant you are and the more significant you are the more people that will remember you. The only reason people still talk about and even know who Steve Jobs is, is because he did something so significant. If it wasn’t for his role in creating the personal computer and Apple, nobody would even know his name, and it all started with a few friends hanging out in a small garage tinkering with things and taking risks, trying new things. What you offer, your expertise, your kindness, and even how often you do what you do are what make you more significant and keep people coming back to remember what you did.
Finally, if you want to be remembered for the impact you had on somebody’s life, then I believe you need to live by a set of rules, teach somebody how to do something they didn’t know how to do, or give somebody something they never would have been able to obtain if it wasn’t for you. If you made an impact on somebody’s life that means you’ve changed their life. Whether it’s small or large the impact you have on somebody’s life changes the way they behave. It teaches them what to do or not to do. The impact you have on somebody’s life is either positive or negative. If you are kind, successful, willing to help, and you teach people how to do the things you are doing and you share your knowledge, then you usually have a positive impact. You can even have a positive impact on somebody’s life because of a mistake you made or because you tried something and completely failed. It’s a positive impact if you have shown them how to do, what to do, or even what not to do in order to succeed or get better at doing something. It’s a negative impact if you’re constantly dragging them down, keeping them from their full potential, or consistently encouraging the act of negligence and encouraging them to be irresponsible. Everything from becoming a millionaire to getting put in jail can impact somebody’s life. It’s the impact you have on everyone’s life that determines how, if, and why you are remembered.
If you are reading this, you and I have something in common. We actually get to sit and think about how we will be remembered and we are fortunate enough to have time to at least try and make sure we are remembered for the reasons we want to be.
So… Do you want more people to remember you after you are gone? Are you content with just your close family and friends being the only ones to have memory of you? Do you want to be remembered for your success or your failure? Do you want people to be mentioning your name 100 years from today because of the Legacy you created? I know for me I don’t just want to be remembered as a guy that got in a horrible car accident and became a quadriplegic. I don’t know if I will succeed or not but, I want to be remembered because I was a good person because I made a positive impact on somebody’s life. I want to be remembered because even though I was a quadriplegic I didn’t let it hold me back or prevent me from achieving success and greatness not for doing negative things, giving up, or being a failure.
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Uncle Donkeys Tales 