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.
Dave Gardner
I’d love to hear your impressions, Alan. I live 50 miles from Alcatraz and have never been! I need to correct that.
Alan Weiss
Alcatraz is from a more innocent era, when the bad guys were obvious and locking them up made sense. The zeitgeist was to protect the public, and rehabilitation was an afterthought. Surprisingly, the place was a fortress during the Civil War (in California!) and boasted 15″ cannon that could hurl a 400-pound ball about 3 miles, enough to put the fear into any wooden ship captain. In addition, smaller howitzers lined sally ports where invading soldiers would be annihilated trying to climb the roads. There were so many cannon that the soldiers couldn’t man them all, and were supposed to run to those most facing the enemy. The entire place never fired a shot in anger. Three inmates did manage to escape the island, believed drowned, but never found.
Dave Gardner
I recall the escape in the early 60’s…it created a lot of fear for the people of San Francisco bay area. Of course, the warden wanted everyone to believe they had drowned. But, what if they hadn’t? We believed these were “very bad” men–the only types of men there, right? As cold and humid as it in the middle of the bay, it must have been terribly uncomfortable for all who were there day after day. Thanks for sharing your insights.
Alan Weiss
They were all studying Spanish and some thing they made it to South America.
David Porter (aka - The Roaming Boomer)
Hi Alan,
I’ve been poking around your website, am currently reading “The Consulting Bible”, and happened upon your blog post about Alcatraz.
Here’s the post from our visit to Alcatraz: http://bit.ly/Sp2HEV
We “retired” (silly me) at the tender age of 50 after the sale of our business and relocated to Scottsdale, AZ. In 2008, after the stock market crash and a default on the business note from our buyers, we found ourselves in a position where we needed to reinvent or wind up Walmart greeters about a decade from now.
Seeing opportunity in the growing social media world we launched “The Roaming Boomers”, have been traveling the world, and now have perhaps our nation’s preeminent travel resource for baby boomer travelers.
Anywho, now that we accumulated all of this experience in the social media world, we’re about to launch a social media consulting business targeted to the business community. We’ve learned that a great many businesses need our help in the social media world in order to provide a deeper trust relationship w/ their clients, and use social media as a word-of-mouth referral system.
Who knows, perhaps we’ll be working w/ you, or one of your team in the near future to help us launch our new venture.
I’m enjoying your book! Thanks!