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.
Mark Cioni
So after all his appearances, Koufax gets to drive…sweet
Tim Wilson
Alan,
I can see it now casual Friday’s and the weekend it’s the red one, the rest of the week it’s the gray one. This is so cool. (Yeah I know I’m dating myself by saying cool, but it is)
Alan Weiss
The red one is Maria’s. We sent her Mercedes back.
Peter Bodifee
Maria must truly love you, assuming she picked her own license plate!
Alan Weiss
Someone once asked her, “I don’t suppose AlanJ is your brother?”
She’s getting a new one and that will go on the truck.
John Shaver
Did you opt for the carbon-ceramic brakes?
Davey Moyers
A gentleman’s refinement in good taste is always displayed in the form of the finest in motoring hardware. As for the red Bentley my friend…that’s just plain sexy. Bentley truly is the higher art in motoring excitement.
Alan Weiss
The Speed (the “granite” one) has the largest breaks on any production car in the world, and they are need to bring 2.5 tons to a stop in record time from high speed.
John Shaver
Exactly right about the size of the brakes. Car and Driver described those brakes as being able to double as coffee tables!
Can you tell a difference between the carbon-ceramics and the standard brakes? I wasn’t sure if the Rhode Island highways let you get an honest test of the cars’ capabilities.
Alan Weiss
There are stretches in the southern part of the state that are deserted, and I’ve also just driven on the southern part of New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway, as well as deserted parts in the past years of the Mass Pike and the New York Throughway. You can absolutely fell the cars’ power at speed and torque from a stop. But the real test (and more fun) are the twisting roads of Nantucket or country lanes where these large cars (2.5 tons) handle better than smaller sports cars and the acceleration, turning, and braking are phenomenal. The only cars I’ve ever owned that corner better are the Ferraris, since they had a huge wheelbase and only four inches of clearance. They were on rails. But these Bentleys are four wheel drive.
You can’t really tell the braking difference, either stops on a dime, and I don’t want to test them from 100+ MPH, believe me!
We all went to dinner last night with the granddaughters to one of our favorite restaurants, where we dine outside. My son took the red Bentley, we took the Speed, and my daughter and son in law came in the BMW. It was quite a show. The restaurant has a photo on the hostess’s counter of Maria, me, and the dogs in the red Bentley; that photo was on exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design. I think it’s on the blog here someplace.