Dont make history make the future.

[Music]

hello uh

wonderful people my name is casey bailey

and

today i’m going to talk to you about

legacy and i’m going to talk to you

about

what i think is the importance of

focusing not so much

on making history but on

making the future and i’m going to try

and get into where this idea came from

and hopefully give you some tips on how

to think about things

going forward so

this concept kind of crystallized for me

a few years ago i was on holiday with my

wife in barcelona

and my wife is a visual artist an

amazing visual artist and i kind of like

art

and we decided that when we were in

barcelona we were going to take in

everything that we could there’s so many

different cultural sites so many amazing

things to see

and we wanted to see all but the one

thing that we specifically knew that we

wanted to see before we went

was a sagrada familiar uh church it’s

like a big

church cathedral type building in the

middle of barcelona

stunning and we’ve seen pictures of it

and we were like this is it this is what

we’re going to see

in barcelona and we got there

and it’s stunning we stand in front of

it and we’re looking up at this amazing

building that’s it’s like everything

you’ve seen on the pictures or

the postcards but it’s bigger and it’s

even more beautiful

and it was designed by a guy called

gaudi and

as we walk around the building i’m

talking to my wife about the design and

what i think is amazing about it

and we get to this part of the building

which looks cleaner

than the side that we’ve just seen nicer

and i look up and there’s a man on a

crane

and he looks like he’s doing work on the

building i said to my wife babe he’s

he’s working on the building like this

they’re working on it like building it

and she said don’t be ridiculous it’s

like a grade one listed building like

they wouldn’t be working on

the sagrada familia uh they’re probably

sandblasting it that’s why this side

looks so much cleaner

so i said okay i’ll let that slide and

off we went and

back in the hotel it was bugging me i

kind of couldn’t get it out of my head

so i looked it up

and it turns out the sagrada familiar

was still being built and even right now

as i’m talking to you

the sagrada familia is still being built

and it turns out the reason is this man

gowdy when he was commissioned to build

the building

he knew that the size and the magnitude

of building he wanted to design and he

wanted to create

they’d never be able to build it in his

lifetime he he would

not be alive by the time it was

completed and so he came up with a plan

and his plan was he would design one

face of the building

that was considerably smaller than the

other two and he would design it in a

way that it could be built while he was

alive

but it was distinctive and because of

the way he built this face

any architect who came onto the project

once he passed away

wouldn’t really be able to change his

original design

and he started thinking not just about

what he was doing right now and what

people would say about it and wanting to

see his amazing building

he started thinking about what people

were going to have to do

when he wasn’t even around anymore and

he shaped what they were going to have

to do

when he wasn’t even around anymore so

despite my wife thinking that they

weren’t still working on the building

they were

they still are and this gets me thinking

about

legacy and this idea that we have in our

head

about legacy because i think often when

we think about legacy we think about

what will people say about me like how

will i be reviewed

what will people say once i’m gone and

there’s lots of different dictionary

definitions of legacy but one is

around what we what somebody’s leaves

for us what our predecessor

leaves for us and i think when we think

about legacy we don’t think so much

about what we leave

we think about what will people say

about what i leave

and what gowdy did is he shapes what

people would

do when he was gone not just what would

be said about him

what will people actually do when i’m

gone

if you think about another example of

this as a great example right here in

birmingham

which is a town hall if you ever look at

or go past a town hall

it’s a huge building and you might think

it was built relatively recently or you

might think it was built a long time ago

but what’s interesting about it is

when it was built this the population of

birmingham was less than a hundred

thousand

and this building is still functional

still used today

and the reason is when they built it

they knew the population of the city was

growing rapidly and they’d made a

conscious decision let’s not build a

building for what we need

now let’s build a building that will be

able to serve this city

long after we’re all gone which it still

does to this day

and i think for me i for a long time was

caught up very much on

the idea of what can i achieve what can

be my achievements and i remember

sitting in a ceremony where there was a

ward in a blue plaque

to someone who had long since passed

away and they were talking about all of

this person’s achievements

and i started thinking to myself i

haven’t done enough

and most people who know me would say

casey you’ve done quite a bit but

in my head i was like i haven’t like

this man has done all of this

i haven’t done enough but what i’ve come

to realize

is the real important things that we do

and not the things that come with the

accolades and the titles

there is something bigger more rewarding

and more important that we can do

and ultimately most of us will never

have a sagrada familia

most of us when time goes by we won’t be

in the history books they won’t write

our names down

we will not become part of history but

we will build the future

we will shape it we will turn it into

what we want it to be

and sometimes we do that without seeing

it

and that’s what makes it difficult and

when i think about that

um i want to share a story it’s really

it’s a series of stories but i want to

share a story about

how you can affect something and not

even see

those effects so i’m a teacher amongst a

million other things i’m a teacher

and years ago i’m older than i look i

promise

years ago i taught a boy and he was an

unruly character

he got into problems he got into trouble

and

it seemed like he wasn’t going to make

it through school and i spent a lot of

time working with him and it was a

big part of my job to work with him and

students like him

and he made it through school he

survived school as he puts it

went after his a-levels qualified to be

a teacher

and the first time i saw him after he

qualified he said i wanted to be a

teacher

because i wanted to have the impact on

people’s lives that you had on mine

and that’s powerful like beyond words if

i think about all of the achievements

that i have

that surpasses all of them that somebody

feels like they wanted to be able to do

for people what i did for them

and he told me a story about a boy who

is teaching the boy is a very talented

dancer

and he’s a very talented writer and he

had the opportunity to go on two kind of

like residentials or camps

at the same time and he was stressing

because he had to choose does he go on a

writing camp does he go on the dancing

camp

and his teacher my former student told

me the story about how he said to this

boy

don’t close doors on yourself because

you don’t know

whether you’d be able to somehow do both

and what the boy did in the end is he

checked with the leaders of the groups

and the camps and he did

most of the writing residential then he

went off to the dance trip

and did the writing residential remotely

in the evening

and the significance of my former

student telling me this story isn’t that

he made this big impact on this boy’s

life

i told him to stop closing doors on

himself when he was 15 years old crying

in my office

i can’t do this i’ll never do that i

never i told him stop closing doors on

yourself

because other people will close doors on

you all your life

you don’t need to do it to yourself and

he told me this story

not to show me the impact that he’d had

on this boy but to remind me of the

impact that i had had

on him and he said the boy told him when

i’m grown up and i’m famous because

that’s what we all say when we’re 15

when i’m famous

because that’s the you know pinnacle

when you’re when you’re 15 years old

i’m going to write a book and the book’s

going to be called stop

closing doors on yourself now you might

think that’s a terrible example

of when you can shape the future without

knowing because i clearly know because

i’m telling you all about it

but i didn’t just come up with those

words i didn’t wake up one morning and

go

stop closing doors on yourself that’s

something that my dad said to me

and he said it to me throughout

different parts of my life

but when i was a boy and i thought i

couldn’t do certain things

he told me casey stop closing doors on

yourself

other people will do that enough for you

and it’s stuck

and because he said that to me i said it

to this boy and because i said it to

this boy

he said it to another boy and now you

have someone talking about writing a

book about it

and if in 10 years time 20 years time 30

years time somebody was to try and write

my life story

they wouldn’t mention it it would have

no significance what

no one would talk about the time that i

taught that boy and told him to stop

closing doors on himself

but if his student writes a book

and in a hundred years time one of my

great-grandchildren reads the book or

your great-grandchildren or anybody

reads the book and decides they’re going

to do something today

because they’re not going to close a

door on themselves how profound could

the

impact of my dad’s words to me become

words that he never really thought about

the impact of

and that sticks with me because

we get lost in what can i achieve

and we lose sight of what can i do what

can i just actually do

and that brings me to a quote from

another

great artist i would put him in the

gowdy category i don’t know if everybody

would and that great artist

is tupac shakur and tupac shakur said

i am not saying that i’m going to change

the world

but i guarantee that i will spark the

mind

that will change the world and that is

another

person thinking beyond themself like

let’s not worry about

what people will say about me what will

they do

what will what i have said today or done

today make people

do and so what i want to ask

of you really is

to think about the way you are going to

make the future

and i want you to

accept the fact or focus on the fact

that

it’s not that important what people say

about you after you’ve gone it’s more

important

what people do because you were there

and how can you make sure that what you

do

makes other people do something or feel

something which is positive

even if all you do is make someone smile

in fact

especially if what you do is make

someone smile

focus on what they do because you were

there i also want you to accept that

you can’t necessarily see the amazing

impact of all of your great work

you’re not necessarily going to see the

outcomes of all the great things that

you do

you can’t build your forest around you

but you can plant it

and it will grow and really i want you

to know that i know it’s a bit cliche

and cheesy

but the future really is yours but it’s

not made

it’s not finished you have to build it

you have to create it

you have to make it what you want it to

be

and there’s a reason why i think it’s

important to think like this

because when you start thinking about

the impact of what you do what people do

because

you were there it takes the burden off

worrying about

achievements accolades

get get that out of your mind what is

going to happen

because i was here is gonna allow you to

focus

and act in a different manner when you

think about the fact that you won’t see

all of the amazing outcomes of your work

you stop worrying about whether you’ve

done enough like how often do we get

caught up in

have i achieved enough have i done

enough have i done what i wanted to do

today

you’ve done more than you know you’ve

done more today than you even realized

and tomorrow it will have an impact that

you won’t even see

so get out of your mind this idea of

have i done enough

you’ve done more than you know and the

reason

that i kind of want us to accept that

we’re building the future

is because then we’ll take it seriously

we will

mold it every single day and even if you

only make this much of the future

you’ll want that bit that you make to be

amazing

nothing that you do is throw away the

way you speak to people

the way you act around people the way

you treat people the hog that you give

to the person that you don’t really know

but you could see that they needed a hug

these things have a knock-on effect in

building

the future that we live in

and other than that uh i’ve just got one

more thing that i want you to do

and it’s not really from me it’s from my

dad

and that thing is don’t close doors on

yourself

other people will do that enough and you

don’t need to do it

we won’t all have our sagadra familia we

won’t all go down in history

but we will all make the future thank

[Music]

you