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.
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Chris Law
I curled for a couple of seasons for fun, so don’t take this as fact… but I believe the reason for it was the difference in the amount of force you can exert on the broom head. I’ve seen the difference first hand, and it really changes the level of control you have over the rock. (There’s no difference in the force you can throw the rock, because the rock is always thrown maybe half as light as you could possibly throw it, even in fast take-out shots.)
BTW, where’s the womens’ 4-person bobsled?
Alan Weiss
You mean men sweep better than women? In what world?!
Chris Law
It does seem counterintuitive, given the cultural stereotypes.
So we know that what makes the rock go straighter and faster is the sweeping. Sweeping adds heat, turning the surface from frozen to liquid. The more liquid, the straigher and faster the rock goes. The harder you can apply force (in the very short amount of time you have the broom contacting the surface about 6 inches in front of the stone, typically much less than a second) the faster you turn the surface to liquid, and the better control you have over the stone.
So it doesn’t show well on the TV, but sweepers lean their whole body into the broom (while staying balanced on slippery ice while moving down the ice with the rock, which is very demanding). They also use their upper body and arm muscles to exert huge amounts of pressure on the broom head. If you did a side by side comparison of men vs women, on average the men are going to have more body weight and more muscle strength.
So in answer to your question… in the Curling world. 🙂
Alan Weiss
You may feel it’s the brooms, but to me this is bocce on ice. What I saw among men’s and women’s teams was some pretty poor strategy and some choking on the throws/rolls/tosses—whatever. The Japanese women gave the Koreans the last fling and all they had to do was put it “in the house,” and they did.
Chris Law
If it wasn’t extremely difficult to master, it wouldn’t be in the olympics. You’ll have to give it a try and let us know if it’s as easy as it looks. There’s a club near you. Let us all know how you get on 😉
Alan Weiss
Wait a minute. It’s not difficult to master a hundred meter dash or a downhill ski trip. It’s difficult to excel at a world class level, but the sports aren’t difficult to undertake. So something doesn’t have to be difficult to be in the Olympics (ping pong, volley ball, speed skating) the ability to do it best in the world is the hard part. It is simply bocce on ice. If you put ping pong on ice I guess it would be a different sport, but so what? Bowling is more difficult than curling. Why isn’t that in the Olympics?
Peter McLean
Curiously enough, wikipedia says bowling was demonstrated at the Olympics in 1988, included in 2015 for the 2020 Summer Olympics … and then promptly withdrawn that same year (2015) due to lack of youth appeal 🙂
Justin Megawarne
That would be solved by compulsory viewings of “The Big Lebowski” to all youths prior to every Olympic exhibition.
Alan Weiss
Well said!
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