Your Legacy is Now Life is Not a Search for Meaning from Others -- It's the Creation of Meaning for Yourself

Table of Contents

About the Author

Other works by Alan Weiss

Introduction

1. Don’t Search for Meaning, Create Meaning

1. Fairy tales
2. What do you mean, "What do you mean?"
3. Meaning within
4. Meaning without

Summary: We don’t seem to know what we mean by "meaning," let alone "legacy." We focus on what we do, not who we are. We are easy "prey" for normative pressures to mold us or even distort us. We need to escape the "ruts" that often unseen others create for us. To do so, we need to examine our beliefs and values as well as our vision for ourselves. Yet most people have trouble answering the question, "Who do you want to be next year?"

2. The Ritual of Competition

1. Why we’re so damn competitive
2. Overt and covert competing
3. Societal benefits and the healing of the high jump
4. The point of no return

Summary: There are origins of competitiveness that are no longer valid but which continue to influence us. What difference does it make standing up to retrieve baggage in a plane parked at the gate after landing? We compete about inconsequential things, often unaware of our own actions. Yet there are times when appropriate competition is a great reconciler and consensus builder. But what are the boundaries? Our legacy is too often tied to others’ (often dysfunctional) behaviors.

3. The Superficiality of Size

1. Why is bigger or faster or cheaper better?
2. Festivus and feats of strength
3. Drowning in noise and outrageousness
4. "One size fits all!"

Summary: Size is often a disadvantage (try to parallel park an SUV) and strength today is not totally reliant on human muscle. The "super fit" and the careful dieters are often those who drop from heart attacks in the streets. Our advertising and corporate promotion are often unconsciously directed to the wrong appeal. Our legacy shouldn’t be "nth" or "est." Why do we praise miniaturization and agility in some aspects (microchips, sports cars) but thing we need a 20-room mansion to be comfortable or food hanging off our plates to enjoy a good meal?

4. Smarts, As We Say in New York

1. The over/under on David and Goliath
2. There is no such breed as an "underdog"
3. Why Voltaire had it right
4. How Luther changed the world

Legacy is amazingly pragmatic and "in the trenches." Street smarts aren’t taught, they’re learned, but not all over, and they provide proportion. David would win every time, and Voltaire observed that "God is on the side of the heaviest battalions." The amount and size of your prayers don’t make you more likely to reach heaven. Luther simply wanted a hearing but the Pope wanted to make an example of him and he inadvertently changed the world. Once you’re an "underdog" in people’s perceptions, you’re no longer an underdog in reality.

5. The Over-magnification of Media

1. Why is a sub-two-hour marathon an accomplishment?
2. A hundredth of a second is ridiculous
3. The official’s foot
4. The "first" nonsense: gender, ethnicity, and novelty

Bigger, faster, better: They carefully measure with chains for a first down in football after the ball is arbitrarily placed where an official’s foot marks the forward progress. Does a hundredth second victory in a swim or footrace really indicate superiority? Just whose legacy are we talking about? The mediocre thrive on arbitrary assessments of merit and we succumb to it, from Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest to "America’s Got Talent" (apparently, not all the time).

6. The Challenge and Necessity of Vulnerability

1. We can’t connect if we’re not vulnerable
2. Why we learn from losing
3. Invention is the mother of necessity
4. It takes courage to connect

Counterintuitively, perhaps, legacy is about humility As humans, we need to connect and interact. This requires vulnerability and reciprocity. It also requires honesty. We talk about "sportsmanship" and "how you play the game" amidst doping scandals and cheating. Even the lofty Olympics plays the national anthem only of the winner, who stands on a podium above others, and maintains a medal count during the games. Our competition and the caste system it creates are the antithesis of connecting and communicating.

7. The Futility of Ignoring and Avoiding Intimacy

1. Of divorce rates, lousy jobs, and alienation
2. The caste system in a new light
3. The McMansion syndrome
4. Luxury tends to mask intimacy

We compete for mates. Why is there such a disproportionate number of beautiful women on the arms of professional make athletes? Why is the divorce rate so high among celebrities? Why does the Wall Street Journal have a weekly section on "Mansions"? The competition at the top of society fosters similar behavior down the ladder and is accepted as normal, with "lifestyle" replacing intimacy, the gross revenues of a performance replacing artistic merit, and the manifestation of luxury overwhelming intimacy? (There is also always a bigger house.)

8. Extremism Is Mindless Competition’s Illegitimate Spawn

1. From Armstrong to McGuire and back
2. Maybe Rosie Ruiz was right
3. The Boys in the Boat
4. The desert isle for the exiled

If we weren’t so competitive we wouldn’t cheat so much, and we wouldn’t find so many ingenious ways to cheat. The Nazis tried to rig the 1936 Olympics, Rosie Ruiz took the subway to try to win the New York Marathon, and drug testing is now a standard accompaniment of all major sports. We cheat because "winning" has become mindlessly addictive, even in cutting a line to board a plane or sneaking into the members-only airline club. A Harvard rowing coach who was asked about his team finish last in the Olympics commented, "Since when is there anything to be ashamed about by being eighth best in the world?"

9. So What If Someone’s Gaining on You?

1. The early worm gets eaten
2. Rushing through the open gate
3. Managing your time
4. True spirituality

We become paranoid about "being caught from behind," and adhere to mindless admonitions about discipline and focus lest we’re surprised by someone highly unlikely passing us by. In law firms it’s "up or out," in universities "publish or perish," on New Hampshire license plates, "live free or die." Isn’t there some comfortable middle ground here? Legacy is daily, you don’t have to worry about someone beating you to the finish line or even beating to the punch.

10. How Green Can Grass Get?

1. The reciprocity of happiness
2. The psychic investment has a poor ROI
3. Being green
4. Creating meaning and legacy

Biography

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.