A classic one-liner from the wise, exiled Jedi, Yoda, comes shortly after we meet the small, quirky creature living out his life on the planet, Dagobah. He startles the young Luke Skywalker who is dismayed after crashing his X-Wing in the swamp and stymied at the overwhelming task of finding a single Jedi on a foreign planet. Yoda asks, “I am wondering, why are you here?” Luke admits he is “looking for a great warrior.” Yoda’s response?

  “Great warrior? Wars not make one great.”

This short quip begs another question. What does make someone great? Human history is filled with people seeking glory and recognition for their power and accomplishments. What’s more, it is also filled by individuals and communities who shower those with great accomplishments in a flood of adulation. What has this adulation done to society’s definition of greatness?

Our history books are filled with leaders who did “great” things, building empires and movements that have changed the course of human events. Some of these are even lauded for their ambition and genius. Some of these actions have been done for the benefit and improvement of society, and others are done to satisfy one’s pride and ambition.

This isn’t to say that all those who are elevated by man to the status of Greatness have secret, sordid lives that would sully our opinions of them. On the contrary, I wish to shift our focus to a greatness that may never reach the praise and recognition of the world. A greatness that isn’t found in the history books or the annals of the world. A greatness that can shatter the paradigm of greatness. What is that perspective?

You don’t have to be something great to be someone great.

The highest form of greatness is one who builds, strengthens, and elevates others by their personal presence and influence without the praise and recognition of the world for having done so. It is a greatness that doesn’t rely on status or comparison. Comparison distracts and corrupts this form of greatness. As President Theodore Roosevelt is credited for saying, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

Greatness comes when one stops thinking about one’s own greatness and focuses on how to serve and magnify the goodness in others. This happens naturally when we develop our character consistently in the principles of honesty, compassion, service, and kindness. As we seek these principles with the intent to do good in the lives of others, then we become someone great.

My mother is one of the greatest people I know. She isn’t famous. She doesn’t have loads of accolades to her name. But she has touched and influenced the lives of hundreds of people. She didn’t do this by telling people how to be great. She simply radiates goodness so brightly that people feel her genuine love and care and feel supported in their personal development and change. I am the beneficiary of her greatness, and so much of what I am today is the direct result of her influence.

In April of 1948, David McKay spoke at a university devotional. He addressed the responsibility each of us has for the influence of our own personal radiation. He stated:

There is one responsibility which no man can evade: that responsibility is his personal influence. Man’s unconscious influence is the silent, subtle radiation of personality–the effect of his words and his actions on others. This radiation is tremendous. Every moment of life man is changing, to a degree, the life of the whole world.

Every man has an atmosphere which is affecting every other man. He cannot escape for one moment from this radiation of his character, this constant weakening or strengthening of others. Man cannot evade the responsibility by merely saying that it is an unconscious influence.

Man can select the qualities he would permit to be radiated. He can cultivate sweetness, calmness, trust, generosity, truth, justice, loyalty, nobility, and make them vitally active in his character. And by these qualities he will constantly affect the world.

This radiation, to which I refer, comes from what a person really is, not from what he pretends to be. Every man by his mere living is radiating either sympathy, sorrow, morbidness, cynicism, or happiness and hope or any one of a hundred other qualities.

So, what influence do we radiate in the lives of those around us? Do we inspire goodness and courage? What do we do with the power that we have? I have often pondered on the power and possibility that comes with money and wealth. This has led me to the conclusion that the amount of money we have means very little if we can’t use it to better the lives of others.

Let us all cultivate this quiet Greatness that others, too, might be great.