The Legacy Guide presents an original and innovative approach to turning your personal history – or that of a loved one – into a treasured heirloom. It uses a two-step approach that makes it easy to know where you are and what you’re doing as you record the many facts and memories of your life. Here’s how it works.

   First, The Legacy Guide breaks life into the natural stages that all of us pass through: childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood, middle adulthood, late adulthood, elder. Recalling your life becomes easier when approached through such natural phases or eras.

   Second, in each stage The Legacy Guide leads you through a process we call facts to memories to meaning in which key facts lead you to remember memories and memories lead you to understand what mattered most.

   These two approaches – stages and facts to memories to meaning – make up the heart of The Legacy Guide process. They provide a simple, flexible, and powerful framework for recording the story of your life.

The Stages of Life

   Everyone passes through roughly the same life stages, but that hardly means our lives are all the same. In each stage we encounter the same life problems and tasks, but the ways we respond to those problems and perform those tasks are uniquely our own. Every face includes two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, yet every face looks distinctly different.

   Here are the seven life stages used in The Legacy Guide.

Stage 1: Childhood (Birth to Roughly Age 11 to 13; the Beginning of Adolescence/Puberty)

   Early childhood is typically anchored at home and centered on the mother. At around age 5 or 6, your world expands to include the world outside home. You begin the process of defining “me” and start developing basic life skills.

Stage 2: Adolescence (Roughly Age 13 to 20)

   Adolescence begins with the onset of puberty at 11-13 and lasts until you reach young adulthood. It’s often a confusing time: you prepare to leave home; your hormones come alive; you complete your formal education. It’s usually in this stage that you develop some idea of the adult you hope to become.

Stage 3: Young Adult (Roughly Age 20 to 30)

   Young adulthood starts in the first half of your twenties, when you begin to establish yourself as an independent adult. It lasts until your early thirties when you settle down and make long-term commitments to work and relationships.

Stage 4: Adult (Roughly Age 30 to Early 40s)

   Adulthood is typically a time of stability, of “growing up” and “settling down” into a number of commitments – especially to creating your own family (if you haven’t done so already), and to a career. It’s a time of many commitments and having no time to yourself, a time of day-in, day-out steady, hard work.

Stage 5: Middle Adult (Roughly Age Early 40s to Early 60s)

   Middle adulthood usually begins when you start to reflect on your life and what you’ve accomplished. It’s unavoidably an enormous transition from youth to the onset of your later years. While still able to do most of what you want physically, you cannot deny the beginning signs of age. You begin to feel there’s only limited time left. It is a time of change, both subtle and dramatic.

Stage 6: Late Adult (Roughly Age Early 60s to 80)

   In late adulthood, the signs of age cannot be ignored, and you may have to cope with emerging or chronic health problems. Once the beginning of old age, this stage now can be a time of continued active involvement. Much depends on how you think about aging and growing older.

Stage 7: Elder (Roughly Age 80-plus)

   This is the final stage. Almost by definition it’s a time of rest. If you’re lucky, you’ll pass this time in relative good health. More than age-driven, this stage begins when you believe you’re done with productive work and you focus on rest, observation of the world, and enjoyment of remaining life. That can happen at 70, or as early as 60, or at 95, or even never.

Facts to Memories to Meaning

   Within each life stage, The Legacy Guide will take you through a three-step process – facts to memories to meaning – of recalling and recording the details and memories of that period in your life.

Facts

   You’ll be guided to record the basic facts of your life – where you lived, the work you did, schools you attended, and so on.

Memories

   Next, you’ll be guided to recall memories around the facts you recorded. “Memories” is a catch-all word for remembered events, occasions, places, moments, people and, not least, stories.

Meaning

   Finally, you’ll be led to think about the meaning of each stage and all the facts and memories associated with it. Meaning has to do with what made you the person you are, the key moments and turning points that set the subsequent course of your life. Suggestions and questions in a few areas – Defining Moments, Values, Love, Learning and Wisdom, and Summing Up – will help you extract what meant most to you.