Mel Abraham argues legacy isn't what you leave behind but what you embed in your children through how you live. He uses a seeds and crop metaphor for money: most people consume their earnings instead of planting part of it to grow wealth that continuously supports what matters most.
I don't want to leave a legacy for my kids. I want to leave a legacy in my kids. And the way that's done is not what I leave, but how I live. And this is why I think we need to look at it this way, is that we get a chance and we say, how do I do this? Because here's the other side of it. When you look at your life, our earnings, that earnings machine, there's just the seeds for us. The challenge is we were trained early on to eat the seeds. To build the money machine, we need to take a piece of those seeds and we need to plant a crop. We plant the crop, and now you can eat a portion of the crop. The crop regrows and will continue to grow and continue to grow to take care of the people you love, the missions you want, the things that matter to you.
