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.
Noah
It’s terrible back there Alan. People would probably end up eating each other.
This cracks me up.
The recognition certificates are a cool idea.
Gretchen
I once wolfed down a similarly sized sandwich at an airport in Zurich. I was a couple month’s pregnant–not showing yet–and eating about a zillion calories a day. I might have looked strange but it was better than boarding a plane with morning sickness on an empty stomach.
Alan Weiss
Morning sickness on a full stomach is better??
John Martin
I imagine there’s a little more colour and texture.
Gretchen
Yes! I thought that was obvious, my apologies. You get sick when your stomach is empty. If you need proof, check out wikipedia, which says “avoid empty stomach.” Not that you wanted to know.
David Thomson
Alan,
I question your decision to post a photo with this blog post. To a mere reader such as myself, it would seem that your entire intent was to denigrate and humiliate.
Why would you choose to do this? Did you believe you post would have more impact by including this photo?
Wow, a woman was eating before a flight! Is this a reason to post her photo for all of the world to see and hold her up to ridicule?
With the rise and impact of cyber bullying, do you not think that people should have some accountability to what they post online? And even when in public, shouldn’t we have some level of privacy…. Or are you now no more than mere paparazzi?
David
Alan Weiss
Why don’t you lighten up? Is there shame in eating a sandwich? Is the woman recognizable? Stop being a wowser and thinking you have some superior moral ground to the rest of us. Political correctness run amok.
David Thomson
Is there shame in eating a sandwich?
No. Apparently only if you consume it within two minutes. Then you become the subject of ridicule.
Is the woman recognizable?
I am sure she is to people who know her. I am sure that she can recognise herself from the photo.
…wowser…. political correctness? Is that the best you can do to defend photographing people without their consent or awareness, then posting the photo to the web with commentary for ridicule?
Maybe next blog post you can photograph homeless people and we can deride them for not having jobs. Afterall, what is the world coming to when the great unwashed masses are allowed to roam free and eat in public…. I mean they don’t even have the decency to call over the sommelier…..
Alan Weiss
You really have an agenda, don’t you? You have to create outrage in innocent situations. Maybe my next blog should be about people who are so deep into their own private causes that they can only view the world through their own moral superiority. No one is asking to you come here, to read, or to comment, though apparently you have been because you’ve found value.
You’re the kind of person who reads a book, ignores the content, and complains that there are three typos. You really resent those doing better than you and, instead of trying to improve yourself, try to take shots at them.
She is not being ridiculed, except in your small mind. USAir’s service is being ridiculed. But that wouldn’t fit with your agenda, would it? Excuse me, the sommelier is calling me….
David Thomson
You wrote, “on USAir and they did a very nice job. In fact, I handed out two recognition certificates…. on each flight”
How exactly are you ridiculing USAir’s service?
As to your other assertions about my reading habits, resentments and value system….. you have obviously mistaken me for somebody else.
Alan, I wish you all the success in the world. I also happen to believe that posting someone’s photo to the internet without their knowledge in the way that you have, with the attached commentary, shows a certain disregard for that person’s privacy.
Simple. No hidden agenda. No nefarious intent. No ad hominem.
In my view of the world that woman would not like her photo used in this way. Obviously you disagree.
Alan Weiss
Obviously, you go around trying hard to find fault, to prove your own higher grasp of morality, and to poke people in the eye. I was making fun of the coach experience on USAir, which you refuse to acknowledge because it ruins your agenda about people taking and posting photos.
I have to tell you, your attitude in taking an innocent posting and doing cartwheels to try to turn it into Watergate reveals a true cynicism about life and others. My motives are somehow inferior to yours, my judgment not as good.
I repeat, you’re coming here, I’m not coming to your blog. If you don’t like what I publish, then leave, but don’t try to teach all of us some vast ethical lesson from your own narrow view. This ends here. You’re tedious.
Simon
Alan,
I’m disappointed you didn’t take the time to get a picture of the sandwich before it was half eaten. How do you think that sandwich feels, knowing it wasn’t shown in all its glory somewhere on the internet? The rest of the world will only ever know it is a half consumed sandwich, tasty it might have been, nothing looks good half eaten.
Please, next time, only post photos of food prior to consumption. Or, at least take the time and courtesy to ‘blur’ the sandwich.
Oh and David, I’m sure the lady photographed couldn’t really give a … about it.
Alan Weiss
Can you believe this guy has nothing better to do than make up “sins”?
Caroline Harrison
Alan, I read you because I do believe you make sense, have great experience and certainly relevant and useful advise and methodologies in sales and consulting.
I have to say therefore, I was rather disappointed with the above post and the replies which are quite simply nothing to do with business more rather just flagging up what appears to be in your view a women being a pig eating a ‘ginormous sandwich’ .
To me this is simple, I work in an industry where we are dealing with and investigating cases of cyber bullying, cyber harrasment and cyber stalking on a daily basis and see the fallout and the way this effects individuals on same.
The fact you wrote what you wrote, albeit granted rather childish and benign as a blog post, in itself is harmless , fairly ordinary and of course opinion, of which you have every right to have and publish if you wish.
The issue arises when you then post the individuals picture up on the site to which, SHE could recognise, as could friends and family and in turn linking it to your comments.
As stated in Willard 2006, “Online Harrasment: ….insults, denigration, impersonation, exclusion, outing ……….” and so it goes on.
So my question to you is one of, did you ask this individual if you could post her photograph in this manner and connect it to same denigrating comments? I suspect not and to be honest Simon I don’t actually think she “couldn’t really give a … about it” but would be rather upset she was held up to ridicule then published on a popular and influencial site around the world.
But hey, maybe Simon you’re right and I’m wrong, and she wouldn’t care. Of course its opinion and it can’t actually be proven either way if she would care or not, as I have seen on a daily basis different people react in different ways to similar postings made of themselves etc and it sounds like you Simon, wouldn’t care. Fact is she wasn’t given a choice and there are reasons there are laws made around this area to protect individuals rights, one such being that of choice.
But Alan you know you are looked up to and in some cases one can see from comments posted even idolised by individuals, your opinions matter and have impact. It’s great that you have the opportunity to have such impact and be an inspiration in peoples lives and change how businesses and industry works. You yourself would agree you are changing businesses and influencing people all around the world as the Architect Of Professional Communities and the Million Dollar Consultant , so with that kind of impact would it not have been better if you just thought a little more wisely and with a little more integrity just from a human perspective.
Please do correct me if I’m wrong but I would suspect you may have been a little miffed if someone with influence like yourself put up a similar picture attached to ‘witty’ comments of your daughter without her permission.
But hey I am sure you will also tell me to “lighten up”, not be a “wowser”, suggest I have a personal agenda or that I resent you or other such quick, easy dismissals.
The sad thing is I have always come here in the past and found value in your blog, respected your opinion and felt you certainly had integrity. This post however provides no value and is seems integrity is lost the moment no permission was given to post it. You have a brilliant brain and are certainly better than many in business and consulting, of course including myself. So it would be great if you thought a little more about the impact you can have, take some responsibilty and then utilise same.
Alan Weiss
That is a very long post about a very small thing. You find value here, and you come. Fine. You don’t like one post, fine. But this is an overreaction of earthquake magnitude.
I’ve had my photo posted without permission all over the place. I’ve never objected (and I don’t look so good in some of them). To equate this with “bullying,” which is the new cause celebre, is ridiculous. True bullying is horrid and reprehensible. To equate a woman’s photo eating a sandwich with bullying is another case of an “agenda” run amok.
I can assure you my judgment is intact, apparently I hit an “agenda nerve” with you, but that’s life. I would not be offended in any way of a photo of my daughter eating a sandwich posted on the web. And we ALL need to lighten the heck up. Pretty soon political correctness will have us locked in our homes afraid to speak or be seen, lest someone, somewhere, be offended.
I really find these points punctilious and ridiculous. You “look up to me” apparently only so long as you agree with me! I’m sure you’re desperately searching for this hard-to-identify woman at the moment so that you can urge her to be offended, even if she isn’t.
This is the contrarian consulting blog, not the political correctness blog.
Alan Weiss
Jim, I really hope that you’re right, I’m dense, these two people have great senses of ironic humor and are not the pompous, pretentious windbags they are pretending to be!
Jim Powell
Was that all for real?
It’s like monty python.
It was a joke.
How could you miss that?
I felt like someone had called the cops.
“I have reason to believe Mr Weiss that you have one or more photographs of a woman or women, eating one or more large sandwiches, on one or more of your digital storage devices, under section PC gone bonkers we have the power to……”
John Martin
What the hell guys…
What’s all this talk of cyber bullying?
If, somehow, she is recognised and her friends and family mock or ‘bully’ her, she needs to examine her own environment and dump the trash – and, if this is the case, she is probably being bullied by them now regardless of the photo!
Personally, I wouldn’t have given a poop about a photo of me being used. I’ll even send one for your own personal usage. You can put it on toilet paper, throw darts at it or burn it whilst performing some supernatural ritual in your underpants, I’m really not bothered.
What I am bothered about is this ‘auto-defence’ attitude that some people feel they need to take. In arguing about the right one has to post such a photo caption you are automatically assuming that this woman needs to be defended and is personally incapable of taking care of her own interests. For me, that is a FAR more degrading stance to take. Should this woman identify herself and take complaint, then that is an issue between the woman and Alan, not us.
The PC brigade need to step back (until they fall off a cliff) and realise that people ARE capable,and indeed must be encouraged, to speak up for themselves without an army of pretentious egonuts creating rules, laws and ideologies where none are needed.
And yes, Jim. I do wish to line these people up by a canal and slap them with a huge trout in a crazed fish dancing session.
Then I want to get wacked into it too.
Splish, splash
Alan Weiss
Nothing I can add to the eloquence, John. Too bad the bloviators won’t understand it.
Simon
Amen.
Jason Burke
There is a simple legal test: a person is entitled to privacy in a place that would yield an “expectation of privacy”. Sitting in a public place does not entitle one to the same privacy of being in one’s own home. Any person can photograph anything virtually anywhere, and that photograph becomes the photographer’s property to do with what they wish. Sell it, print it, post it. Short of crossing the line into defamation or libel, we should all be wary of those that would restrict the right to document – via the printed word or photos – the world around us.
Alan Weiss
A voice of legal reason! Is there a law against people expressing superior moral views and contaminating the environment? Thanks for your comments!