What Would Your Heritage Think?

What would your younger / older self think of your life now? How would they feel about the decisions you make on a daily basis? How would you live up to your perspective of yourself, looking from a different time?

Are you making decisions that honor yourself?

Are you treating people in a respectable and honest manner?

Are you making short term or long term decisions?

I often think about this perspective to see if I align with a longer perspective of life. When making daily decisions we can sometimes be too close to see the full picture. In the daily overwhelm it’s easy to get wrapped up in the right now decisions without much thought of how they relate to the long term.

By what standards am I making this decision?

On what foundation am I basing this action?

How do I know if I am on the right path?

How do I intangibly measure my process?

It helps for me to zoom out and think about how my path looks from my perspective at different ages and then when it really gets intense for me is when I zoom out past myself to think about my heritage.

How would my heritage evaluate my decisions? Would my great great grandparents respect the decisions I’m making? Am I making decisions that my great grandkids would be proud of?

This is when the feelings really hits home for me.

For me it really comes down to the word “pursuit”. To me, that’s the greatest responsibility I have to my heritage.

Am I pursuing my story as fully authentically as possible?

If that answer is “no” I’m not only doing a disservice to myself but to a long lineage of my family.

I come from a family of pursuers, on both sides. My heritage pursued the shit out of their story, refusing to give up in the face of adversity, struggle and even success. For me the most important thing is the journey of pursuit.

It’s not material pursuit or the pursuit of arrival. I’m not pursuing material toys. I’m not pursuing a destination. I’m simply in pursuit for the sake of going after it, of believing in something (myself) wholeheartedly and refusing to let the obstacles stop me.

I’m not pursuing to one day stop pursuing. I’m pursuing because that’s what my heritage did and I have a responsibility to them and to myself to keep pursuing so I can be an example for my heritage to come.