Make Others Become Great

"Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great"  ~Mark Twain

This is an interesting quote to think about. It is true if you think about it. Who in you life do you feel is a great person. It might be a teacher or a boss or someone else who you think does amazing work. Why do you think they are great? Usually it is because they have made you feel like you yourself might be great as well. That teacher prods you to do well on a test or compliments something you have written.  The boss tells you that you have been doing a good job and instructs you in ways that will make you a better boss.

One of my favorite examples is when we read authors. We think they are great. They don't know us. They have never spoken to us. They may never speak to us. Somehow, though, they are able to make us feel like we are someone great. I don't know what it is. Maybe because we get the opportunity to read something in their world, become part of that world. We get to see a small part of what is inside them.

We all strive to be great in some way. We all strive to be like those who we admire. The ones who, in our eyes, are already great. In that way we try to me more like them, making even the slightest bit of greatness. What we don't always see is that those we see as great once saw someone before them as great, someone who made them want to be better, to be great themselves. Soon you will have people looking at you wanting a little bit of your greatness to rub off on them. All you can do is be as great as you can be.

All You Need is a Spark

"A great flame follows a little spark." ~ Dante

There are a lot of these types of metaphors. What happens when you start a snowball rolling down a hill? You get a bigger and bigger snowball. What happens when a small leak breaks through a dam? If left unchecked, it will erode the hole in the dam till water is flowing through it with the power of a waterfall. What happens when one ant finds your picnic? Soon your food will be covered in the entire colony of ants.

What you have to learn from these metaphors is all it takes is an idea or even an small inspiration. All you have to do is feed it and it will grow into something great and amazing. The blog you are reading right now; it was an inspired thought. What would happen if I found some of life's great quotes and let my mind run away with them? Would I be able to write something that would benefit everyone? Would I be able to write something every weekday for an entire year? If I did, then this would turn into something great, something everyone would want to visit on a regular basis, something that would turn into a book or a calendar or who knows what else.

Take a few minutes and look at the things in your life. Don't just look at the normal things like your meals, and your job. Look at the friends around you and the projects you have started but laid aside because you lost interest or ran into some sort of roadblock. Ponder the new ideas or rekindle the old ideas. Envision how some of those ideas might blossom into something that could make money for you. Think about the things that have possibilities. Take those possibilities to the next level.

Meet with your friends... You know the ones. The ones who have ambition; the ones who know how to take an idea and run with it; the ones who will do their best to support you, to drive you to do more with what you have, to encourage you to take your ideas and make something amazing out of them. I think you will be surprised at what comes from those people and ideas.