421 | Change Your Family Tree and Leave a Lasting Legacy

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

life, legacy, root, understand, decisions, folks, tree, kids, parents, healthy, people, family, controlling, swing, system, struggling, minerals, change, grapes, process

SPEAKERS

Chris LoCurto

Chris LoCurto  00:00

Changing your family tree, how your root system affects the legacy that you leave, that is coming up next.

Chris LoCurto  00:16

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show, where we discuss leadership and life, and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks. Let me ask you a question. What comes to your mind, when you hear the word legacy? For a lot of you, it might be a legacy box, you know, a box full of letters, full of passwords, important documents, a will, you know, insurance, all that kind of fun stuff. Another could be a financial legacy, leaving a fortune, no matter how big it is, small, it could be whatever. But leaving a fortune to your family, which is a good thing to do and for a good reason as proverbs 13:22 tells us, "Good people leave an inheritance to their grandchildren." So what do you think of when it comes to legacy? Now, while money is important, there are other kinds of legacies that we leave to our family and friends. Like a spiritual legacy, if you are someone who understands the importance, and let me speak to you men, especially, God looks to us to be the ones to lead our families, our spouses, our children. And to make-let me say it this way- to make sure they have a relationship with him. But ladies, it is not up to your husband, you've got to be responsible for your own relationship, right? But what are you leaving-let's say for your kids? Is there a spiritual legacy that you're leaving for your kids? Did they know God? Do they know and you know, again, you know, we have plenty of people who are following who are non-believers, that's fine. Talk to us if you want to, we'd love for you to be believers. But here's a deal for those of you that are believers, here's what you have to ask yourself: If you've not done a good job leading your kids into a relationship-a healthy relationship with God, who's going to? Right? Don't put that responsibility on somebody else. Another good legacy you can leave is a character legacy, right? Integrity, generosity, kindness, I can tell-you've heard me say multiple times on the show, especially as I've been out working on, we bought some new property, and I've been out there working on cutting in a road and dropping trees and you know, sawing them up and splitting them by hand. Oh, man, let me tell you, the body is tired. But here's one thing I can tell you, the legacy of growing up with my mom teaching us how to have a great work ethic. You know, my brother and I are out there, dropping trees in the woods and what you call bucking them up into rounds, and then bringing them home and splitting them by hand. As I'm out there, dropping these trees, I am reliving that and thinking to myself, I love that I get to be out here and do this, where a lot of folks would pay somebody to do this. But I get to get out there and run a chainsaw or swing an axe, right? And I gotta tell you, it's hard work. And I do not have a problem with it. Some of my body parts do, but as you get a little bit older, I have realized I am not a teenager anymore. That didn't take very long. Another great when you can leave is like a language and culture legacy, you know, for a lot of folks, my dad is from Sicily. And so there are aspects of that culture that I get to experience or have been able to experience. You know, we we have a great guy that we've worked with on a lot of stuff, as far as like remodels and things like that, who has brought the legacy. I believe he's from Ecuador. I think that's where he's from. But just the legacy that he's pouring into his kids as he's raising them. So there's a whole lot of great stuff that you can leave as far as good legacies. There's also bad legacies we leave behind as well, negative legacies, bad habits, patterns, things that are picked up by our kids. You know, there is always this debate on if you have the alcohol gene, you know, if you have an alcoholic in your family, there's plenty people that will say, "Oh, well, I have that gene inside of me. And so that's why don't drink." Any gene inside of you that has a disposition to something that is negative has to be turned on. It's not something that makes you all of a sudden go, "I'm gonna pound a fifth of bourbon if I pick up the bottle, it's just the way that it's gonna happen."

Chris LoCurto  05:07

However, there is something that can be picked up. And that is watching a parent numb with alcohol, watching a parent numb with procrastination or submissiveness watching a parent, you know, lose control, and respond with controlling habits, those are things that get picked up, you know, a terrible legacy is one of abuse, or strife, and all kinds of broken relationships, right? Another terrible legacy is one of carelessness. You know, one of not making good decisions with your finances or not making good decisions with relationships, or so on and so forth, or avoiding relationships. All of these things can leave really bad legacies behind. Another terrible one is that as we struggle with adults, how many times we avoid our kids, or we have a bad disposition, and we never realize that our kids are reading into it, that it's their fault. That it's their problem. So there's all kinds of bad legacies that we can leave behind as well, negative legacies. And we're going to be addressing some of this stuff, or we're actually we're going to be addressing a lot of stuff on our root system issues. And that actually does more to than just change our small branch of the family changes the DNA of the whole tree, enabling us, you know, to bear different, better more fruit. So changing the family tree and leaving a legacy means changing you. If you do that, then it changes your legacy. And to change ourselves, we're going to dig into the root system when we come back right after this.

Chris LoCurto  06:52

Folks, if you've been listening to me for any length of time, then you know the number one issue when it comes to business, when it comes to family, when it comes to friendships, is having a lack of high-quality communication. To make sure that you are absolutely winning in every aspect of your life, it all starts with having great communication, the best way to get that communication is to understand your personality style, and to understand the personality style of the folks that you're spending the most time with, whether it be at work or whether it be at home, the best way to do that is to go to chrislocurto.com/store and get your personality profile and personality profiles for your team today, get it for your family members. today. As you go through that profile, you will begin to see the greatest ways to communicate, go to chrislocurto.com/store today.

Chris LoCurto  07:51

Okay, so I mentioned that we're going to talk about root system today. And there is a great episode for you to go back to and that is what you have in common with wine that is a great episode for you to listen to, I believe it's 198. So go back and listen to that. But we're going to talk about the root system, how it's formed in our soil, the upbringing, the environment, the influences the instruction. So let me just kind of explain to you what I mean by that. This is the foundation of what we teach in Next Level Life. We all have so if you think about a root system now, we are fans of wine around here. I was raised in Lake Tahoe. I was born in Sonoma and so I always have spent time going back to those two areas. And I've always loved racing and skiing and I've always loved wine as well. And I actually enjoy the farming side of it immensely. So for me, I used to always go in the offseasons and I get to spend time with the winemakers and the growers and and you know, the best wineries let me say, the best wineries will say that "Hey, you have to be a great farmer if you're gonna make a great wine. You can't just make a great one out of junky you know grapes." Right? So you have to kind of understand how it works well if you take any fruit or vegetable they all have a process of digging down with roots through the ground to pick up water, they're looking for water, right? But one of the things that wine grapes do all almost more than anything else now there's some debate that coffee does this the same way, and i don't know, I understand it but I've never experienced anything that does it as much as this. If you plant a an orange tree, and California or Mexico or Florida, the juice comes out tasting like an orange. It doesn't come out tasting like a chocolate orange. It doesn't come out smelling like a you know tabbaco in in the orange, it doesn't take on as many characteristics of the minerals that are in the ground as wine grapes do, and wine grapes get so much of their boldness and their complexity from the minerals in the ground, the wild yeast that grows on the grapes, the tannins, these are all things that affect the character of the wine. While in the ground, there is a different set of minerals for every layer, right? There can be some of the same minerals in some of the layers. But as you go through different layers of soil, and those roots dig further down, which that's not the same as like a tree. Now a tree will only go as far as it needs to to get water. When you're growing wine grapes, our goal is to get those roots as far down as we possibly can, because it picks up so much of the minerals and it deposits the expression of those minerals into the grapes. So without going into all the details of what you have in common with wine episode, understand that the the major goal we're talking to, or the major piece we're talking about is how many different deposits it pulls from the ground into the fruit. Now, what does that have to do with what we're talking about today? Well, guess what? There's something that we have to get in life. And that is we are responsible for our own behaviors. As we walk through Next Level Life, there's a saying that we have, "We don't make any monsters and we don't make any victims." Right? We may have gone through horrible things in life. But our goal isn't to sit and make monsters of people. But it's also not to sit be a victim to those situations. Alright, our goal is how do we find out how to make better decisions in life. We don't want to sit there and feel every bad experience, we don't want to sit there and talk through like Renee on a couch, you know, of all how we felt through all of the different things. Instead, our goal is how do we get to the why the thing exists, so we can make better decisions in life. So when you look at the root system, one of the major things that we talk about. And again, it's a difficult thing to understand right here. So just I'm going to give you the cliff notes version. There are things that happen in life and things that we experience with parents and grandparents and siblings and friends and, you know, influences in life that become deposits in our root system. And as we go through and experience those deposits, they shape a lot of our decision making this is super, super, super important for you to hear. We base a lot of our decision making on the deposits in our root system. And the reason why we do so much of this mainly, is because we don't understand the deposits in the first place. We don't understand, for a lot of folks, they don't even recognize what happened. For some folks, they recognize what happened. But for everybody that don't understand why these things exist. "Why do they happen? Why did my parents ignore me as a kid? Why was my mom so controlling with my dad, how can my dad didn't have a backbone?" All these different pieces, we have to discover a lot of perspective. And as we gain perspective, we can see how those are affecting our decision making process. So for example, if I have a controlling parent, and a submissive parent, and I'm not talking about two parents that do really well together, I'm talking about one who is constantly trying to control the other, tell the other one they're not good enough, point out all their flaws, all of these different pieces, then I have this conflict in my brain. Because these are supposed to be two great parents, they're supposed to be healthy. They're supposed to be the earthly representation of God. Thus, the reason so many of you who do not believe in God, don't believe in God is because you're looking at your parents, and going, "That's gotta be what God is like." No, it is not. Do not blame God for how his kids are acting, right?

Chris LoCurto  14:27

Many times you can see your kids acting in a way that you did not teach them to act. But they're still your kids and you still love them, right? Hopefully you do. So a lot of those situations create thought processes in our minds, and we base decisions on those deposits. Here's the deal. Those deposits get passed down those experiences in our lives. We perpetuate into our kids, we pass on into our kids, even the person who's says "I am going to be nothing like my parent, I'm not going to be anything like my mom, I'm not going to be anything like my dad." They do what we call the pendulum swing, they go from where their parent is, or parents all the way over to the exact opposite side, and then end up doing the same thing from a different direction, just in a different way. These are things that we perpetuate into our kids. And what we help people to see is how they got there in the first place. Why? Because then we can make much better decisions. Right? So we have to gain a lot of information. If you look at Luke 6:45. In the message, it says, "You don't get wormy apples off a healthy tree, nor good apples off a distressed tree. You don't get wormy apples off a healthy tree. Nor get apples off a diseased tree. The health of the apple tells the health of the tree." You must begin with your own life giving lives. It's who you are not what you say. And do that counts why your true being brims over into true words and deeds. So let me flip this around. If you want to know that somebody is coming from a pretty jacked up background or jacked up root system, look at their words and their deeds. Look at how they respond in life. Right? And listen, there's tons of people coming from jacked up backgrounds that have made better decisions and choose to continue to make better decisions in life and not allow that root system to affect them too terribly much. But here's the great thing, when they do discover the whys, then they discover freedom, not the whats, a lot of folks know the what, right? They know what exists in their root system, they just don't understand why. Out of our root system flows thought patterns, positive and negative. There is so much every single one of you listening, right? Every one of us has negative self-talk. Every one of us. This is hard for some people, not not a lot, probably about 5% of the folks that come to Next Level Life, this is a tough thing for them to realize, every one of us lies to ourselves. We tell ourselves things about us that just aren't truth. "I'm never going to be accepted by anybody, I'm never going to be in a good relationship, I'm never gonna make enough money in life, I'm never going to be thought of as pretty or handsome or funny or intelligent." We tell ourselves all of these lines, "I'm never gonna be good enough for my parents, I'm never going to be good enough for my spouse, I'm never going to be good enough for my friends, it's my responsibility to make everybody happy in life." We tell ourselves all of these lies, because they're coming from our surface level responses, these responses that we do in life, because we don't understand why the stuff in our root system exists.

Chris LoCurto  18:03

This is the important piece of knowing your root system. It's one thing to know what, the power is understanding why it exists. So if I can see why my father was so submissive to my controlling mother, if I can understand why he didn't have a backbone, and didn't stand up, then I can understand why I've made a whole lot of decisions in my life. If I can understand why my mom is so submissive to my controlling father, you know, it's the same concept, right? There's so many different equations involved in our root system. But we base our thought patterns and our surface level responses on watching and being taught as we're kids. Once again, this is not victim mentality. We don't get to blame our parents, our grandparents, our our aunts, and uncles, our teachers, that's not the concept. This doesn't mean that we get to be entitled and blame everybody for everything. That is not the purpose. The purpose is perspective. The sooner we understand that so much of our decision making process is based on the stuff in our root system, the sooner we can make better, more powerful, more healthy decisions. But without understanding that stuff, we don't just turn right and make better decisions, where instead we just, you know, we might even make better decisions, but we hold on to a bunch of lies and negative self-talk or even limiting belief systems. So we have to understand that the stuff that's in our root system creates what we would call that surface level, that stuff that's on the surface, which is all of those funky decision making processes bad decision making processes, unhealthy decision making processes. This is referred to as our internal or interior lives, the heart of a person can be easily polluted when we don't understand what we're being trained on, or taught, or experiencing, so on and so forth. Proverbs 4:23 says, "Guard your heart above all else, for determines the course of your life." If we do not guard our hearts, if we allow everything that we're watching around us, to affect us and impact us, and then absolutely guide our decision making processes, then guess what? There's a really good chance we're going to make a lot of bad decisions in life. So tending the root system, to make changes to that internal or interior life, we have to first discover what we struggle with. What are the things that we are struggling with? What are the things that we are experiencing, we do this process where we have folks fill out their surface level responses before they ever come in. And then we add to it as we go throughout the event. And it's always funny, because people are like, "Oh, you're putting more up there." Yes, the goal is to see as many as there can possibly be. This isn't a scorecard of how bad you are, we want to see everything you're struggling with, so that we can tackle it, so that we can get rid of it. So we can put healthy things in place, you got to first discover the what that you're you're struggling with. Next, you have to discover why we struggle with it. This is the powerful piece of Next Level Life, getting to why things exist. And I can tell you, probably about 25% or more people bring their spouse to come sit in on their event. And every time somebody brings a spouse in, we will tell the spouse, "Now listen, you're going to hear me get to some things, and you're going to jump out and say, 'Oh, I've told her that 1000 times, or I've told him that 1000 times.' And then I'm going to ask you a question, 'Did it ever work?' And you're gonna say, 'No.' And I'm gonna say, 'That's because you keep putting out the 'what', not the 'why'." Everybody can see the 'what' and their spouse. It's not difficult to see that your spouse is struggling with something. But the example I use is, is when you see somebody who's screwing up their life with drugs, and you go, "Hey, you're screwing up your life with drugs." They go, "Yep, you're right." "Well, you should stop doing that." "Yep, you're right." Thank you so much for that fantastic advice. But I still don't understand why I'm struggling so heavily with drugs, right? Why is this thing that is something that will not leave me or I don't seem to be able to change? Because the what isn't the thing that changes you, it's getting to the great understanding of why. Next thing we have to do is we've got to seek healing, and restoration in those areas. Now, once again, our job in Next Level Life is not to lay you down on a couch and talk to you about all these experiences. Our goal is to get you as much perspective as we possibly can, so that we can show you the route to healing. Now, we've had some folks that have had straight up phenomenal healing right then and there during their event. But for everybody, it's a practice, after you leave 100% of people have to then go practice the healthy tools we've given them actually have to practice the things, putting the things in place to make sure that they get or stay healthy, right? So you've got to, you've got to seek that healing process that redemption restorative process, nothing you need to do, you need to seek to change your decision making in habits. So many of you already understand that there's a lot of decisions that you're making that probably aren't the healthiest things. It could be the way you lose your temper, it could be the way that you procrastinate. It could be the way that you control or manipulate somebody, it can be the way that you avoid or hold back love from somebody, it could be the way that you call somebody out so that you can communicate to them that they're not good enough or not good enough for you, or not worthy. There's all kinds of stuff that we do that we need to change. There's all kinds of habits that we have to do that we need to change, to get healthier. Now if you are very happy with where you are, then just stay right where you are. But you know, we have folks that want to actually have a better life even if they've never had anything bad happen ever in their life. They want to know the tools so that they can have a better life. So if you seek to change your decision making process, then an incredible thing happens. You start changing the future and you start changing your family tree. The more healthy the decisions you make in life, the more healthy your life becomes. Folks, the root system is mainly coming from our family tree. Guess what? You're perpetuating that into your kids. And if you don't have kids, you're going to. And if you're somebody who actually says, I don't ever want to have kids, I can help you out with this 99% chance, that's because you didn't like the way things happened when you were a kid, and you don't want to perpetuate that. The truth is, all of this is solvable, right? You can change your future, and you can change your family tree. One of the things we don't think about is how we are impacting and perpetuating our root system into our kids how we are affecting their decision making process. So, many of us have this great ideal that if we leave a financial legacy to our kids, "Oh, gosh, we we've been amazing parents." Or if we leave this cultural legacy to our kids, "Wow, look at what we've done." And we miss out on something incredibly important. Our kids would much rather have a very healthy future, and a very healthy relationship with their family over money, over stuff, right? So sometimes we think to ourselves, if I just put in a great estate plan, then I will have done my job as a dad. No, no, no. If you put in a great estate plan, and you've taught your kids to have horrible character, they will blow through that. They will screw themselves up, they will screw their kids up, they will screw everything up. You already know that part, right? "Well, but Chris, I don't know how to." "Okay, well, then find out how." "I don't know how to lead my.." "Well, find out how to lead your kids." But here's the key. The most important piece, if you don't understand you, and you don't have that perspective of where you come from, and what you've experienced, and what you've been trained on, what you've been taught, and what you've allowed, and the decision making process you make, then you're not going to change the way you do stuff for your kids. You will perpetuate it.

Chris LoCurto  27:18

So, yes, should you leave an inheritance to your children? Absolutely. You should leave it to your children's children, right? But what's more important than a financial legacy? For me, a correct relationship with God through a spiritual legacy. "Yeah, but I don't have one of those myself." Great. Learn why, and then learn how to fix that. Learn how to get those tools. Coming up next, we're going to talk about what I successfully changed family tree really looks like.

Chris LoCurto  27:52

Hey, folks, if you're feeling stuck, anxious, not good enough or held back in life, then you need to go through our Next Level Life. That's why we created this two day event process. The power of Next Level Life is that it helps you discover your specific root system, why you believe what you do, how you make decisions, and why you are where you are in life, you'll learn the things that are holding you back in life and how to overcome them. You'll come away having found healing and ready to start living with purpose and authenticity. So if you're ready to stop struggling, if you're ready to find greater peace, then head over to chrislocurto.com/nextlevellife and Next Level Life is waiting for you. That's chrislocurto.com/nextlevellife today.

Chris LoCurto  28:44

Okay, so here's what I want you to do. I want you to imagine the legacy you can leave for your spouse for your kids for your grandkids, right? What legacy are you leaving your family right now? Imagine what it could be. Imagine how much better it can be. Mike Forster, who is a client who's been through who's become a friend. The family has just become friends of ours. They're just phenomenal people but he's leaving a better legacy to his family than he ever thought possible. Here's what Mike says. "Before I attended Next Level Life, my family was on the brink of shambles. We were breaking and drifting apart. Next Level Life helped me to see how I was reacting to triggers, what impact they had on my personal and professional decisions, and how my reactions impacted my wife and children. Through the process I was changing me at the core." Let me say that again. Let me read that light again. Because so many folks think that they're gonna come to this and change their family. "Well, my family's the one that's wrong." "Hey, through the process I was changing me at my core, and it took concerted an intentional effort. The relationships we have now would never have occurred without Next Level Life. It's provided us the opportunity to have healthy and whole relationships, not only with ourselves, but also with each other. Our relationships are close, honest, and trusting. It took time and patience to get here." Folks, here's what I want you to understand. You have to be, as Mike said, "intentional". You have to actually make the effort to make change. Yeah, I love it literally, in the building right now upstairs is somebody who has known since we had the discussion earlier, has known since 2013, that she should go through this event. And now she's in it, and loving it, and having life change. But it's amazing when I asked, "Hey, what what made you decide to come here?" And she's like, "Oh you don't even want to know." Shout out to Tiffany, "Oh, you don't even want to know." And then she backed up and said, "I know I should have done this since 2013." And praise God, praise God, her and her husband are here. And they are experiencing this event. Why? Because they want to change their family tree, they want to change their own lives. They want to change their own decision making. They want to change life for the better, they want to understand things. They want to understand how things happen and why they occur that way and why they make decisions the way that they do. You can do the same exact thing. Here's what we have to realize every generation is a hinge generation. It can go one of two ways. The key is it depends on you. You can perpetuate the problems in your family's root system, or you can get that junk out. You can get unstuck, you can move past it and overcome it. And again, some folks come in and they have a great life. But they know it's not the best it could be. And some folks come in, they've had the absolute worst stuff happen that you can imagine. And it changes their lives, it doesn't matter where you are.

Chris LoCurto  32:20

It's something that can impact every single person. And more importantly, it can impact your family tree as well. So changing your family's future, leaving a lasting legacy. These things hinge on the choices that you make day by day, every day. So the longer you wait to get your life changed. I am not saying you need to be fixed. Listen, we all need fixing. We all need changing, right? So do not hear "Oh, you're the problem, you just gotta be fixed." Understand every person walking this planet needs Next Level Life. Every person needs to learn the things that they've been trained and trained wrong. Let me give you a crazy example. It's actually not that crazy. But I am somebody who grew up in a lot of sports, right? I played sports, all growing up. But I didn't play golf until later on in life. And I am somebody who swings for the fences. I am a what they would call a power hitter. Which is why I usually spend most of my time chasing my ball that has gone way into the trees, right? Because I swing so hard. Now I was out on the course with a buddy of mine, Keith. And he was standing behind me watching me swing. And he goes, "Hey, let me give you a little bit of advice." He goes, "Here's what I want you to do, don't go all the way over with your club, stop at three quarters, three quarter swing." And everything inside of me went, "But I won't have all my power. I have so much more strength if I go all the way back." He's like, "Just stop at three fourths of the way." Well, I know Keith and I know how great of a golfer he is. So I took his advice. I pulled back stopped at three fourths of the way and then pulled all the way through the ball. Amazingly, and knocked the ball well over the green. Now, here's what happened. I continued to play the way that he was telling me to play. I gained 20 yards on every one of my clubs. I had to readjust the number of the club in my head. So if I hit one club 100 yards, I now had to know I now hit that club 120 so I had a backup and change everything because all of a sudden, I got new learning. The old learning of come all the way back and swing through for me was bad teaching, it was bad training. Why? Because to a guy who swings super hard, that type of process actually messes me up causes me to lose in life. It's the same exact thing when it comes to your decision making in life. If you have bad influence, if you have bad training, and it doesn't even have to be intentional, listen to me, it doesn't have to be intentional. Right? As I said, at the top of the show, we don't make any monsters or victims out of this process, we gain perspective. So we can learn new tools, new ways of doing things to make better decisions. And having somebody watch the swing that you have in your golf stance, and then making an adjustment changes the way you hit the ball. It's the same thing in life. Same thing with your decision making process. So folks, let me hit you with one more thing. Many people are so concerned about what they're going to be remembered for. I will tell you, that is not my concern. I'm not concerned- I don't try and set my life up so that people remember me, that is not what I'm looking for. God remembers me, God knows me. God has a plan for me. Here's what I'm looking for. Am I doing the things, am I living a life, do I have the character, do I have the love, do I have the obedience to God, that down the road when I'm gone, somebody will go "This is what I remember about Chris. This was his character. This is what I loved about him. This is what I thought about him." If you spend time focusing on how people are going to remember you, then you will spend time selfishly trying to live a life that causes people to remember you. If you live a life for God, and you live a life with great character, great love, great quality. You don't ever have to worry about setting up that memory. You'll be remembered. People will know. So don't wait. Make the decision to gain information and perspective. So that you can change your life. Just get the perspective. Go to chrislocurto.com/nextlevellife and just get the perspective to make a decision if you want to change your life. It's that simple.

Chris LoCurto  37:32

 Alright. Well, folks, hopefully this has been helpful for you today. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to imagine your legacy. Imagine the legacy you can leave, "Oh but I don't have a good legacy." It doesn't matter. What can you leave? What do you want to leave? What do you want to perpetuate into your kids, your grandkids and so on. Imagine the legacy you can have take this information, change leadership, change your business, change your life,b and join us on the next episode.

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