What Makes Somone Great?

Throughout time, there have been people who seemed to do the impossible. A few names come to mind: Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Dr. Martin Luther King. I have sometimes wondered what made such people so unusual.

Yes, they went against their comfort zones and pursued their dreams despite all the challenges and perceived hardships. Here is a passage from The Architecture of All Abundance which I would like to share with all of you:

“Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King all experienced doubts, fears, wounds, uncertainties. They took a stand for their new dream, however. They refused to accept the dreams they were raised with and they began dreaming, dreaming, dreaming others. In spite of the apparent futility, lack of funds or approval, or the opposition of others – in spite of all of this they dreamed. They did not take their support from the outcome; they took their support from the compelling necessity of their dream. Conceiving the dream, connecting to the passion, imagining it, learning to live in it, becoming the dream, taking it forward day by day – these created their new world, and inevitably drew to them all the resources and opportunities needed.”

When I first read that passage, I was interested in the concept that people we would call great had drawn to themselves the resources and opportunities that they needed to help them achieve their dreams. Initially, it sounded too simple. How could they have been able to do that?

 

 

With time, I came to see that how we look at the world is reflected back to us. So if I view the world as being cold and harsh, that will be my experience. If I look at the world as being full of abundance, that will be my experience, too.

I then looked at the people I know who have managed to defy the odds and noticed that they too have the same belief about life. None of them fall into the trap of thinking that dreams cannot come true.

Recently, two writers; Judy Rodgers and Gayatri Naraine wrote a book about their research into to why some people are great and others are not. The name of the book is Something Beyond Greatness.

 

 

In the book, the two writers had a rough time in the beginning trying to determine how they would go about finding out what makes one person great and another not. They interviewed many people they thought were great but the result of those interviews made them realize that their quest was much more difficult than they anticipated.

Finally, through a series of discussions with many people, they were able to recognize some underlying themes. One of the first themes was that the people that we consider to be great, have always engaged in actions that were compassionate and caring. It is not as if they suddenly woke up one day and were great. Here is a passage from the book which relates to this point:

“It is not so much the quality of the action that distinguishes moments of greatness from lives of greatness. There are remarkable similarities in what we hear from those who have had a single moment of what we might call ‘greatness’ and those who have lived lives characterized as great. For those who have lived lives of greatness, there is a continuity that arises from a flow of benevolent actions throughout their lives.”

Another aspect that Rodgers and Naraine discovered which is common with people who have achieved greatness is the quality of humility. All of the people they interviewed who could be called great had a sense of humility about their actions and lives. They did not think they had done anything usual or extraordinary. In addition to their humility was the awareness that their actions were not created by themselves but that they were guided to them by a higher power.

The authors also discovered that in addition to all the other qualities that I mentioned above, love was the motivation behind all the actions that we would deem to be great.

As they continued on with their research, they came to notice that greatness was not such a rare thing after all. Here is a passage that I think sums it up perfectly:

“On rereading what we have written, we must finally conclude that greatness is not so rare after all. Greatness is always present in natural human coexistence, when we are not caught up in defending an ideology, a theory, or a political justification. Greatness is present in the nature of collaboration. Greatness is present when we mutually care for one another, when we listen to one another in mutual respect, and when we are open to mutual understanding. Greatness is naturally present, because love is the foundation of human coexistence.

What is rare are the circumstances in which life invites us to act free from ideologies, theories, or political commitments. In these circumstances we unconsciously accept the invitation and act instinctively from love. Most loving acts flow by unnoticed, but sometimes we are fortunate and we witness what should always be visible in human life – namely, that we are naturally loving beings. Ideologies, doctrines, and convictions are the bane of our existence. They trap our intelligence and blind our souls.”

Note: Here is a link to my new article, The Twitter Dilemma: To Follow Or Not to Follow, at Elephant Journal. To read more about the reasons behind my new schedule change, click here.

 

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• Forget About Mission Statements…What’s Your Creed?
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• Passion…It’s A Way of Life
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• William Shakespeare & The First Step to Becoming Extraordinary