Your Legacy is Now: Life is Not a Search for Meaning from Others -- It's 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 with 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 is one of those rare people who can say he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it. His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times Mirror Group, The Federal Reserve, The New York Times Corporation, Toyota, and over 500 other leading organizations. He has served on the boards of directors of the Trinity Repertory Company, a Tony-Award-winning New England regional theater, Festival Ballet where is his President of the Board of Directors, and Chaired the Newport International Film Festival.

He is an inductee into the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame® and the concurrent recipient of the National Speakers Association Council of Peers Award of Excellence, representing the top 1% of professional speakers in the world. He has been named a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants, one of only two people in history holding both those designations. He has written more books on consulting than anyone else.

His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 64 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (from McGraw-Hill). His most recent before this one are Million Maverick, Lifestorming (with Marshall Goldsmith), and Threescore and More. His books have been on the curricula at Villanova, Temple University, UC Berkeley, Temple, and the Wharton School of Business, and have been translated into 15 languages.

He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Press Institute, the first-ever for a non-journalist, and one of only seven awarded in the 65-year history of the association.

You can acquire free text, audio, and video materials at Alan’s site, alanweiss.com, as well as access his blog, Contrarian Consulting, and his podcast, The Uncomfortable Truth.