The Legacy Process: Your Story Needs to be Told!
The Legacy Process
We all know guys don’t talk about ourselves right!? Generally speaking we’re pretty tight-lipped about our lives, our accomplishments, the stuff that we’re really good at, our failures, pretty much everything that our loved ones want to know about us.
I call this The World War II Survivor Syndrome; it’s like in the movie Saving Private Ryan where Private Ryan as an old man was standing at the grave site of Captain Miller, who saved his life in the war and he mumbled to his wife, “Was I a good man?”
That’s why I created the Legacy Process, so guys will know that “they’re a good man!”
It’s where I interview guys and gently draw their stories out; the hurts, the challenges, the triumphs that they’ve had in their lives – the stuff that they’ve either never wanted to talk about or didn’t know how.
This is the kind of stuff we keep hidden inside, stuff that our families, our kids would love to know about.
As my buddy Pete, a fellow pilot who inspired me to create this process said when I interviewed him, “Yeah, sadly we lost a lot of people in my family. I wish that I had talked to my father about our family before he died, about our family tree, our history. There was so much that died with him. That made me realize that my family story needs to be recorded and left behind.”
Everybody has a story. And that story matters to our loved ones. Your story might just break open a beautiful new relationship with your wife, your girlfriend, or your kid who’s dying of loneliness to connect with you.
Why the Legacy Process?
I created this process for a few reasons but one of the main ones was because I was the kid who grew up in the old days who was supposed to “be seen and not heard.”
That’s pretty tough on a young kid so I kept my pain inside for a lot of years. But when I did come out I realized that I had a hell of a story to tell.
So the question is “who are you, what’s your story and why do you matter!?”
You matter because someone can relate to and learn from your story. You have loved ones who you may have shut out or who never really got to know you because you didn’t know how to tell your story.
The people who love you want to know about your life. You owe it to them because when you made the commitment to them, to live with them, to marry them, to have them as your kids, part of that commitment was to let them inside, whether you knew it or not.
“Shining the light on ordinary heroes in our everyday adventures.”
You say “my life isn’t interesting enough to talk about, it’s not special, besides who would be interested?”
You’d be surprised! This process is very special and when you start to open up you’ll be surprised how special you are, maybe in ways you never realized.
We’re all put on this earth for a reason…your story might be your reason!
“Never underestimate the power of your story to change lives…often yours and those closest to you.”
Bert Botta
Email:botajet@gmail.com
