Hey GenXer. Do you ever think about your legacy? Unless you’re a big philanthropist with your name on a building, it might not come up. But it’s hidden in a question I hear a lot of clients ask: “Did my work in corporate even matter?”
Legacy is the imprint you leave on your kids, your people, and your work. For many, especially GenXers, that legacy is tangled up with family expectations and career traditions. But what if parts of that legacy were never really yours to carry?
There are other ways to think about legacy that hold clues for what you might build next, and important work you can do before you even figure out what that will be.
The question of legacy will take us a couple of episodes. In part 1, we’ll explore the legacy you inherited: family traditions, career roles, expectations, and how to decide which pieces are actually yours. In part two, we’ll look at the legacy you get to create going forward.
The Family Blueprint
Some people don’t just carry the legacy of a company, they carry the legacy of an entire profession. Maybe you’re a CEO because you come from a long line of high-achieving, competitive smarty-pantses. Maybe education or business ownership was the family language and stepping into that world felt like upholding tradition.
Some people I talk to joke that they were given three options when they were still in high school: doctor, lawyer, or engineer. Pursuing that path was both an honoring of their parents’ wishes and a wise decision not to unleash chaos by going to music school.
But what if that legacy is starting to feel like a straitjacket?
It can be hard to even name that feeling, especially when your career has been a source of pride in your family. When you’re the one who “made it,” leaving the path can feel like betrayal. Or worse: like erasing the dreams your parents never got to fulfill.
However, your success doesn’t disappear if you walk away from your role. Your family’s sacrifice isn’t dishonored if you choose a different path.
You’re not abandoning a legacy. You’re evolving it, on your terms.
But inherited roles aren’t the whole story. Let’s talk about what’s already living in you, and what happens when you start to trust that.
You Are Already a Living Legacy
The first thing to know is that you already embody many legacies. You, just being you with your personality and your quirks, carry people and experiences from before you were born through the present day.
Some aspects of your personality came from mentors, friends, or family members. Some from your middle school best friend. And some of it is probably just caffeine and old movies.
So as you think about the mark you’d like to make from here on out, remember that it’s a team effort, and that team already lives inside you.
Transitions Shake Things Up
Life transitions can make you feel like a confused 20-something again, questioning everything, including your own competence.
Something similar happens when you leave a career: you temporarily forget that you know anything, you worry about what your parents will think, and you get overwhelmed by what you could do next.
I would like to remind you that you are a grown-up and you are qualified to make your own choices.
Your career can honor what came before without being a monument to it. You get to live by values that reflect your reality now. Then you can build a path that’s true to who you are, not just who others hoped you’d become.
You Don’t Control the Story Others Will Tell
If you ever worry about leaving a legacy or making a mark on future generations, know that you’ve already done it. One aspect of legacy is control, so let’s tackle that next.
You likely made an impact in your current and previous companies, even if that impact was informal. People trust you. Maybe they imitate your leadership style or how you talk.
And you can point to your accomplishments: products launched, processes improved, teams more functional.
But when you leave, that story doesn’t belong to you anymore. You might spend months ensuring a smooth handover, only for that prep work to be completely ignored.
Once you walk out the door, it’s no longer yours to manage.
This is a weird kind of grief; not just about leaving, but the sadness of being misremembered. You might watch your best work get reattributed, reshaped, or erased. You might even become the scapegoat for problems the organization never resolved. That’s real. And it hurts.
You don’t have to spend your energy managing other people’s memories. That energy is more useful when you direct it to your future and let your legacy inform your path. Their version of the story may shift. That doesn’t mean you lose yours.
Once you release the pressure to control how others remember you, a new kind of inquiry can begin.
Clear the path for Inquiry
Many of my clients feel like their years in corporate disconnected them from who they truly are at their core. So the rich, soul-searching time after leaving is a great opportunity to start poking around for the sparks that have been hiding, waiting for you.
That’ll go a lot easier if you do some legacy de-cluttering, like letting go of family pressure or old workplace expectations. And that high school English teacher who said you’d never make it? Time to let them go, too.
If you need to prepare skeptical family members for your departure, let it go something like this: “Thank you for your support and care. I feel proud of my work in this career, but it is no longer right for me. I’ll take it from here.”
You Get to Choose What’s Worth Carrying
And maybe none of this talk about legacy applies to you. Maybe you don’t care about leaving a mark. You don’t want to build a personal brand or pass something down. You just want to live well, make a difference for the people in your orbit, and leave quietly when the time comes.
That counts too.
Legacy isn’t a moral obligation. It’s just a lens. You can choose whether to use it or toss it entirely.
Maybe you were known as the tough one. Or the softie who gave up credit. Or the dutiful daughter. Here’s the upgrade: You get to choose what you carry forward, and what to finally leave behind.
How do you figure out what to carry forward? That will be in Episode 12: Now Build What’s Next.
Your legacy is unfolding in real time, and it’s yours to shape.
Burn the map. Build what fits.
