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.
Danielle Keister
I was wondering when you’d show up! So glad to have some sense and sensibility there. 🙂
Danielle Keister
My handle is “grittyva” by the way.
Dave Gardner
Alan…can’t find you at “BentleyGTCSpeed.” Is this still a work in process? All the best…Dave
Dennis
Alan
What Dave says.
I am wondering:
1.IF you would choose to follow anyone (first) or will you follow back (only?)
2. If you (dis)like the term follower?
@dennisprice
Alan Weiss
You can find me as Chad has indicated above.
I don’t plan to follow anyone UNLESS someone can make an extraordinary case to do so. I don’t care about the terms. If you can live with “Twitter” and “tweet” I think you can live with “follower”!
So far, about 99% of what I see is nonsense, but I’m still learning.
Alan Weiss
Happy to be here/there, helping to bring rationality to cyberspace.
Peter Bodifee
Alan, if you are not following anybody (which I understand, as leader don’t do that) how come you see 99% nonsense?
Danielle Keister
Not speaking for Alan, but I wouldn’t say leaders don’t follow anyone. That’s ridiculous. 99% of the stuff on the Twitter stream IS inane, idiotic, uninteresting nonsense. And literally EVERYBODY on there is a “social marketing expert” or some variation thereof. It’s really dumb, LOL.
I personally don’t care much for these social networking things, especially since the there are tried, true and far more direct, quicker paths that lead to business. That said, it has its uses and it can be leveraged. And if you’re exploring Alan, one trick I’ve learned is that in order to find more interesting people/conversation, you have to follow some people. What I initially did when I got on Twitter was follow just people in certain target markets I was interested in. Then, by accident discovered that if I followed a bunch of people, I ended up finding others that were more interesting. The Twitter zealots may have a heart attack over this because gawd forbid you should rudely unfollow people (!!!), but I follow people, find other folks through that connection who had more things of interest to say, and then periodically I’d go through the list and unfollow the ones who posted boring, stupid, whatever stuff. Anyway, I’m still exploring with it myself and don’t give a hoot about the “Rules” of the zealots. You can’t rationalize with them anyway.
Alan Weiss
You can read postings that other people make by searching for them. Danielle seems to agree with that, above. And I think she’s right, you test things as you go.
Sandra De Freitas
Months ago I tweeted “I wish Alan Weiss was on twitter” and someone wrote back “Fat chance! I don’t see it happening”. Thanks for proving them wrong! 🙂
Alan Weiss
Got 100 folks tracking me!