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 Weiss
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I never thought of the D-Day invasion and freeing Europe as American hegemony. And I always thought, no matter what your politics, you blame the politicians, not the people in uniform serving the flag. I appreciate your insights very much.
You need to live with dogs to understand all the cartoons. I write them for dogs.
Aras Geylani
Hi Alan,
You publish many types of content (video, audio, blog, cartoons, etc.) But within each type there is a consistency. Your Monday Memo newsletter arrives in a familiar consistent format: banner with your picture and a beautiful car, tagline, date, body, copyright, footer with command links. Your recent newsletter was a sudden departure from the norm. A picture can worth a thousand words, but I sincerely doubt many people can utter them. When I see the headlines of your newsletter in my Inbox I expect certain things. A second less likely reason could be that those readers see you as a consultant, not a politician. American foreign policy, troubles in the Middle East, and the state of American economy, the mere sight of wartime cemetery can easily overshadow sincere wishes to remember the dead of war, and instead project an image of American hegemony.
I think it was a thoughtful issue. Keep up your good work, I love them, sometimes I don’t understand the cartoons but I am sure Koufax wouldn’t unsubscribe. 🙂
Sincerely,
Aras
Matthias Bohlen
Alan, it may have been a pure coincidence. How is the mean number of people unsubscribing per day and how is its standard deviation (sigma)? If 9 is less than or equal to mean+3*sigma, it is a common cause, not a special cause. If 9 is greater than mean+3*sigma, it makes sense to start thinking about it.
Alan Weiss
Exactly what I suspected, the delta PI cusp didn’t equal /6#%8, or less.
Mike S
Alan. I think your reply was funny as hell, but I also thought Matthias had a good point.
Mike
Alan Weiss
I agree, I think Matthias is right, it’s probably just a normal distribution and not due to the content, though it strikes me as a strange time to unsubscribe since that issue’s unsubscribe link was used.
Rene' Vidal
Picture, no picture. Christmas list, Hannukah list. Whatever, who cares.
Alan Weiss, you’re a mensch doing amazing work. Isn’t the first question, “Did you conduct your business honestly?”
Many, many thanks.
–Rene’ Vidal
Alan Weiss
No, because that should be implicit, not a question you have to ask, but I get your point.
Rene' Vidal
Integrity is just a ticket to the game–Jack Welch.
Jewish tradition: God’s first question: “Did you conduct business honestly?” Not hammering, clarifying-poor writing my part.
For fun, latest dumbing down example: my 8 year old’s 4th place tennis trophy-6 kids in tournament. Upside-he wasn’t happy with plaque.
Alan Weiss
Jewish proverb: God Pardons the coerced.
Self-esteem is only boosted when the criteria are valid. When adults insist that kids don’t keep score but just “enjoy the game,” the kids keep score anyway. Schools that have done away with valedictorians don’t preserve self-esteem, they create mediocrity. Remember “ebonics”? Inferior English as a justifiable linguistic form actually advocated by morons on some school boards? The people who don’t want to keep score are the people who don’t want to compete against those who put in more time, work, and talent.
Rene' Vidal
he has full docket on pardoning.
tournament directors want repeat business :).
ebonics not far from clayton, called east st. louis.
keep keeping score, quote by mao tse is fabulous.
best and happy 4th.
Alan Weiss
And to you….