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
The vaccine doesn’t prevent a person from catching covid, nor does it prevent a person from spreading it. This is a gene modification therapy, which has never before been injected into a human body. It does however prevent a person from getting seriously ill, if or when they do catch covid, thats all it does. I’m a healthy 33 year old, and I’ve had covid last year, which fortunately was very mild and I got over it within 4 days or so. Studies prove that my anti-bodies and natural immunity provide many times greater the protection than that of the vaccine. Studies out of Israel prove that the vaccine efficacy rate of both pfizer and moderna are less than 50%. No one talks about getting in good health. (those who get seriously ill or even die have 2.6 pre-existing conditions including obesity, diabetes, etc.) If a government can force an experimental, operation warp-speed therapy into a human body against their will, If they can take your most personal and sovereign entity and force something into it, what can’t the government do? If you want to be vaccinated and get an annual booster, go for it if you feel you need it. Those who say the unvaccinated are a hazard is a complete falsehood. Between fauci, the previous head of the FDA now sitting on the board of directors for pfizer, the head of the CDC going against experts, the immediate canceling or de-platforming of even the most mild criticism of the status-quo, and lastly the incessant 24/7 public relations campaign to get inoculated simply makes me say NO. There’s more facts and logic I can share, but there’s one’s unvaccinated point of view. Cheers
Alan Weiss
Confirmation bias run rampant. 99% of deaths are among the unvaccinated, and people getting ill form Covid are clogging the health system preventing other essential treatments for people who need them. Your “personal and sovereign entity” reminds me of people who feel the government has no right to tax them, yet also feel someone should pave the roads, deliver the mail, and defend the coasts without their money. Your statistics are simply not true. If the vaccine prevents people from getting seriously ill and dying, that’s sufficient reason to get it. A year later people aren’t falling over in the streets dying from the vaccine. They’re dying from Covid at worst and causing a medical crisis at best. Your “sovereignty” stops at other people’s noses. Just as one small example, your “fact” about Fauci and Pfizer is false (https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-fauci-pfizer/fact-check-anthony-fauci-is-not-part-of-pfizer-as-posts-claim-idUSL1N2P31NR) made by a professional football player who also made other wild claims—that’s your source. I’m tired of people who decide to simply invent things to support their own biases and stubbornness. Don’t get vaccinated, I don’t care, but stop claiming it’s a matter of personal sovereignty (whatever the hell that means) when it’s simply selfishness and being deliberately misinformed.