Your Legacy is Now
Life is not a search for meaning from others, it’s about the creation of meaning for yourself.
For over 30 years Alan Weiss has consulted, coached, and advised everyone from Fortune 500 executives, state governors, non-profit directors, and entrepreneurs to athletes, entertainers, and beauty pageant contestants. That’s quite an assortment of people, and they run into the thousands. Most of them have had what we euphemistically call “means,” and some of them have had a lot more than that. Others have been aspiring and with more ends in sight than means on hand.
Alan Weiss states:
I’ve dealt with esteem (low), narcissism (high), family problems, leadership dysfunctions, insecurities, addictions, and ethical quandaries. And I’ve talked about them through the coronavirus crisis. But don’t get the wrong idea. About 95% of these people have been well-meaning, honest (to the best of their knowledge), and interested in becoming a better person and better professional. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be talking to me.
I found the equivalent of the “runner’s wall” in their journeys, where they must break through the pain and the obstacles and then can keep going with renewed energy and spirit. But runners know how far they must go after the breakthrough, be it another half lap or another five miles. There is a finish line.
I’ve found that people in all positions, even after the “breakthrough,” don’t know where they are in the race, let alone where the finish line is.
They do not know what meaning is for them. They may have money in the bank, good relationships, the admiration of others, and the love of their dogs. But they have no metrics for “What now?” They believe that at the end of life there is a tallying, some metaphysical accountant who totals up their contributions, deducts their bad acts, and creates the (hopefully positive) difference.
That difference, they believe, is their “legacy.”
But the thought that legacy arrives at the end of life is as ridiculous as someone who decides to sell a business and tries to increase its valuation the day prior. Legacy is now. Legacy is daily. Every day we create the next page in our lives, but the question becomes who is writing it and what’s being written. Is someone else creating our legacy? Or are we, ourselves, simply writing the same page repeatedly?
Or do we leave it blank?
Our organic, living legacy is marred and squeezed by huge normative pressures. There is a “threshold” point, at which one’s beliefs and values are overridden by immense peer pressure. Our metrics are forced to change.
In an age of social media, biased press, and bullying, we’ve come to a point where our legacy, ironically, is almost out of our hands.
Yet our “meaning”—our creation of meaning and not a search for some illusive alchemy—creates worth and impact for us and all those with whom we interact.
Wes Trochlil
See Frederic Bastiat.
Alan Weiss
Maybe you could summarize what you find interesting about him, so I don’t have to spend the afternoon doing research!?
Wes Trochlil
Bastiat wrote an essay called the parable of the broken window, in which he explained that destruction is not an economic benefit to society. Also known as the broken window fallacy, the idea being that if you break windows, then that’s good because you need to employ a windowmaker to replace it. This ignores the opportunity cost of that money NOT being spent on something else.
Alan Weiss
Thanks for the Cliff’s Notes, I’m in good company!
Dennis Snow
Silver lining comments usually come from those not truly effected by the disaster. A friend of mine says, “Nothing is impossible for the one who doesn’t have to do the work.”
Alan Weiss
I think Hemingway said, “When you’re cold, don’t expect sympathy from someone who’s warm.”
Paul Gibbons
I think that was Solzhenitsyn, in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
Alan Weiss
I just looked it up in my quote collection and you are exactly correct! Nice job, and thanks!
Joseph
Just curious: how do you manage your quote collection. By now, it should be a huge one.
Alan Weiss
I have to have read or heard them personally. I use Filemaker Pro, and I cross-index them by category. Very simple.
Peter McLean
Undoubtedly the same kinds of people who report in the NY Times (and from the White House) that a rise in unemployment from 7.8% to 7.9% is an indication that the US economy is growing and is a positive sign of recovery. Sheesh!
Hope you and your families are all well over there on the storm front.
Alan Weiss
We’re all well, thanks. I don’t know how politicians can look at anyone with a straight face. Everyone has a plan, but no one has results.