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.
Alan Burke
Government intervention almost always creates more difficulty for whomever, and wherever it’s aimed at. It’s even intrusive outside the US for those uneducated about politics outside our own country. What do you think of this, no pay for all high level political positions, purely voluntary. This way, because there is no incentive financially, they MUST be doing it for the right reasons. If one thinks they should create rules, legislation, etc. that impacts daily life for all, then they should have been successful in the free market, produced value, saved and invested for them and their families future. I read articles about politicians spending thousands of dollars on pens, over $50k for remote controlled curtains, private flights, etc. If they want to live well, great, but it should come out of their own pocket, not ours. Just an opinon. Cheers
René Vidal
Hilarity on the mountain lion. 🙂
Look I’m a believer in “80% ready move” as much as the next bus driver but if Don Shula didn’t believe “perfection” were possible, there’d be no perfect season.
We need to do our homework, we need to “prepare to play” and we need to use discretion, to be wise.
Whether it’s government or the private sector or how the server greets you, most of the time we know excellence when we see it.
Of course it’s better that we create excellence ourselves and raise awareness around what top performance really looks like.
“Perfection is not optional.”–Peter Diamandis
Praveen Puri
I’ve never seen a monitor in the Chicago area. School buses always just have a driver who stays on the bus. The kids just get on.
Alan Weiss
Not here!