Maybe I Can® with Debbie Weiss

Ep. 149: What Will Your Legacy Be?

• Debbie Weiss • Episode 149

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This week, I’m reflecting on legacy — the kind we build quietly, through love, kindness, and the way we show up for others.

October 28th would have been my husband Gary’s 68th birthday, and it reminded me how his spirit still lives on in the smallest ways — a shared laugh, a recipe he perfected, even the way my family still says, “very nice.”

In this episode, I talk about how we all leave legacies — not through big achievements or wealth, but through who we are at our core. I also share what I’m learning about being intentional in how I live mine.

If you’ve ever wondered what kind of impact you’re leaving behind, this one’s for you.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome back to the Maybe I Can podcast. I'm your host, Debbie Weiss, and I so appreciate you joining me today. It's nice to see you out there. Or I wish I could say hear you out there. Someday there'll be that interactive thing. I know there are on other platforms like if I went live. Which I guess why don't I do that? Okay, I don't know. That's not what I'm here to talk to you about today. Boy, what's that called? Like squirrel in my brain? Whatever. Today, or this week, I should say, would have been my husband's 68th birthday on October 28th. And so this is the third birthday that I guess we'll be celebrating while he's in heaven. And I say celebrating, but honestly, my husband was the complete opposite of me. I want everyone to know it's my birthday. As a matter of fact, I was kind of annoyed that I married someone who also had an October birthday. But the good thing is, is that it wasn't really a big deal to him, which kind of I didn't really understand, to be quite honest. So I'm not here to talk about loss or grief. You know, but this day, the 28th, comes with a lot of emotions and makes me think about Gary more than I do in a typical day. And boy, I can't even count how many times he pops into my head on a typical day. Countless. Literally countless times. There are so many things that happen that make me have a flashback to a memory, maybe wish that he was here, that I could share a joy with him or a struggle that I'm having and I needed him to talk through something. But this week I'm honestly here to remind you and me that all of us leave behind some sort of legacy. And when I think about Gary, boy, there are so many different legacies that he left behind. I think when I first met him, I almost felt like he was a young-looking Santa Claus, always smiling and jovial with the pot belly, and he, you know, his beard, even though it wasn't as long as Santa's beard. And he just had a way about him. And one of the things that I always really admired was the fact that he didn't care what people thought about him. And I mean that only in the best way possible. Because throughout my life, you know, what am I worried about? I'm worried about being judged. How do I look? What are people gonna think? Maybe I should do this, maybe I should act this way, all the things. And he was like, boom, this is me. Take it or leave it. I am not embarrassed about anything. Back in the early days, I had never met someone, a man, I mean, I have to be honest, even though this is very sexist for Mark, who loved taking a bath with candles, and the whole like aura of the whole bath thing, like he did. It was crazy. And I gotta tell you, I can't stand taking a bath. So I really couldn't relate. But he was into all of his smells and all of his candles. He liked the bath bombs, he loved going and buying different smelly candles. It was like what we did for a while in the early days. It felt like we were always going and sniffing different candles. And he just owned it. He owned who he was. The other thing about him was that he loved to eat, but he also loved to food chop and he loved to cook. And he was a really, really great cook, thank goodness, because as you might know, I don't cook. And it was just divine intervention that Gary and I found each other because I don't think he could have handled having a woman who wanted to do things her way in the kitchen because he had very particular things about him and we've where things should go and how you should do it, and all the things. And uh so I think it worked out in the end for both of us. But people started to think of him as like a food connoisseur. And I'm talking about people that we know, our friends and family. And it was almost like they would wait for him to taste something that they made, and it was like looking at a food critic for his reaction. And if he said, very nice, those were his words, very nice, you knew you got the Gary stamp of approval, and that this was one of the best dishes. And one of his legacies, that we always, again, friends and family, whenever you taste something, if you really like it, we stop, we pause, look at each other, make eye contact, and say, very nice. Very nice. And it honestly just makes us smile. When I think about the idea of leaving a legacy, it seems like something that should be big. Like only people who either have a lot of money or have a lot of power. Like, not everyday ordinary person like you and I leaving a legacy. But that's so not true. So not true, right? I mean, gosh, I can still remember things that I did and said with my grandmother, even though she passed away uh uh I don't even know how long ago. Thirty plus years ago. But her legacy still lives on within me. And of course, all my relatives, of course, my father, and I know that you can say the same thing. And maybe I'm speaking for you, but I think that you want to leave a legacy, right? I I know that I do, and it's something I guess as I get older that I think about more and more, especially with my kids, right? What am I doing? What am I saying that's going to have a lasting impact that will carry through and something that people will talk about or they'll notice an action, or with me starting writing my book, and I guess I never realized I wrote my memoir, and even though my kids have not yet read it, it will always be there, and I have documented many of my stories from my life's journey, and that is a legacy, but you know what? Don't we also leave a legacy in how we conduct ourselves? I want to be known as someone who's kind, I want to be known as someone who is courageous. I mean, I took a risk. I didn't know how to write a book, I didn't know how to start a podcast or talk in front of people or any of the things that I'm doing now. And I was able to, I don't want to say put my fear aside because the fear is always riding with me, but I'm not letting it drive. And so I was able to face my fears and push past them and try these things. And maybe I certainly hope that that's a legacy that inspires other people to do the same thing. As a matter of fact, that's why I'm doing all of these things to inspire you as well as everyone in my family, anyone in my circle that I can get and kind of shake them and say, you can do this. You can do whatever this quote unquote is for you. You don't need to be stuck where you are. Everything is possible, regardless of your circumstances, regardless of your age. I don't want you to forget that that is something that I want my legacy to be defined by. As well as being generous, being kind, being kind to the McDonald's lady at the drive-thru, being kind to the woman who I see all the time at the pharmacy, or my neighbors, or anybody really that I come into contact with. You know, think back. It's not just your friends and family that have a lasting impact on you. I can think back to my gym teacher, or I guess it's physical education teacher, but we used to call it a gym teacher, right? Gym teacher from sixth grade. How she changed my life because she was the first gym teacher who believed in me. The prior gym teacher who had been, you know, I went to a K through six school, and so the previous gym teacher had been there all those years when I was K to five, and then she retired. But she was tough, and she kind of always made me feel less then because I couldn't run as fast and I couldn't climb the ropes or do gymnastics or any of those things. And she made me well, she I don't want to say she made me feel badly about myself, but it caused me to feel badly about myself. And then when she retired and we got a younger new gym teacher, Miss Henskin, I'll never forget her name, and she saw something in me, and she saw that I was a decent athlete. Even though I struggled with my weight, even though I wasn't as fast as the other girls, because I wasn't. I was definitely one of the slowest, if not the slowest. But that didn't have to define me. And she taught me that. And her believing in me allowed me to believe in myself. Wouldn't you like to be that person who does that for someone else? I know that I sure would. And I want you to think back to not just your family and friends, but people like that. It could be anyone. It could be someone, honestly, I have to bring up the McDonald's lady. You know what? She knew it was my birthday. It's unbelievable. The fact that someone that I just see for literally 30 seconds a day is kind enough to know when my birthday is and wish me happy birthday just really, really blows me away. And that's what I think is important for each of us to create whatever legacy we want to leave behind and to actually think about it on a daily basis, right? Because we don't know when our time will be up. Something that I've learned after dealing with grief is that love doesn't end. It just kind of evolves. Yeah, it's not the same when your loved one is no longer physically present. But I like to think that their legacy has had and will continue to have a lasting impact on me and my kids, and all my family members. It's those little things that create a legacy, whether it's saying I love you all the time to someone when you hang up the phone, or a morning text, or words of encouragement, or patience that you have when times are tough and you're on edge. Every time we tell a story, every time that I say very nice. That is keeping Gary's legacy alive. Again, all my other loved ones, my father, my grandparents, all of them. Who's shaped you the most? And how do they live on within you? I want you to think about that. Because I'm sure it's not about money or possessions or things that they left you. No, it is about who they were at the core as a person, what they taught you about life, what they taught you about love. And now think about how are you going to leave your legacy? You've gotta start thinking intentionally with your actions. My youngest son graduated from college back in May, still looking for a full-time job, and I decided that, in the interim, I was going to have him work for me. And as an entrepreneur, the things that I do aren't things that he was taught in college. And as he's been working with me and seeing how complex it really is, he said to me, I can't believe this. And I can't believe that not that I've gotten this far, but really just how much is involved and how much I know about it. And boy, that made me feel so good because that's my legacy. He's seeing after 60 how much I've learned, how I continue to push forward. And I love that. It's one of the best things. It's a gift. I hate to say it, it's a gift that he didn't hasn't yet gotten a full-time job in his field, and that he's able to see this and to learn about things that he's not going to learn about when he goes and works for a big corporation, if that's where his life winds up taking him. This is the nitty-gritty with not having someone tell you what to do, not having someone train you, not having someone just, I don't know, lay out a path for you, watching as you do it yourself and just figure it out on your own. With that said, I have to give a shameless plug here at the end because I am very, very excited. This has been in my mind. I just I felt in my bones for the last couple of years that this is something that I wanted to create. And it's finally here, and I'm super, super excited about it. And what I'm talking about is the sprinkle effect card deck. And it's based on the 17 sprinkles that are in my book, The Sprinkle Effect. Things like courage, joy, possibility, belief. And every day in the morning, I shouldn't say every day, let me just backtrack and say I try every day to journal in the morning. Some days I'm successful and some days I'm not, and that's okay. That'll give ourselves some grace. But after I journal, it's like, okay, then I go about my day, and what happens? I forget about all the things that I wrote or all the things that I said that I was going to focus on. And for the longest time, I would write those things down on an index card and tape it to my monitor at work or something like that. And the nice thing about the sprinkle deck is that every sprinkle has three different cards: an affirmation, an inspiring quote, and a journal prompt. So you can use all three, you can use one, you can take the quote, the affirmation, whatever, and take it with you and keep it in front of your face all day, as opposed to my ugly little index card. Because of course, I think these are adorable and happy with the sprinkle and the writing and the whole thing. And if you're not watching on YouTube and I'm holding it up and you have no idea what I'm talking about, but go to Debbie or Weiss.com and you will find them. They are$27.99. There's 52 cards, there's a guidebook, there's a card that has all the sprinkles listed. The guidebook tells you different ways that you can incorporate them into your life. And I've been using them myself the minute that I got them, and they're really a game changer. If you use them, that's always the key, right? With all of these things, you've got to use them. If you do, I'm telling you that they will really add a lot of value to your life. So the link will be in the show notes. And if you use the code JOYJ-OY10, you will get 10% off your order. And I'm also going to send you a free sprinkle effect pen that has the four different color inks, those fun things, the pens that we had when we were a kid, where you push down and you choose like black, blue, green, or red. I love them. See, that's a little something it's like a little sprinkle of happiness every time you write. How great is So, the sprinkle effect card deck. This is another thing that's going to be part of my legacy. What about you? I know that right now, you are leaving a wonderful legacy behind. You're creating them. We all are. Let's be intentional about it as we move forward. Okay? You with me? Alright, that's what I like to hear. A little sprinkle of legacy. We've got this. Thanks for listening, and I will catch you next week.

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Debbie Weiss

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