Alan Cohen Newsletter April 2007

Brush with Greatness

One evening when I picked up my voicemail I heard a message from a friend who works as a massage therapist at a luxury hotel on Maui: “Call me ― I have to tell you about my brush with greatness.”

I phoned her immediately and asked what had happened. “I massaged Dustin Hoffman today,” she reported proudly.

Well, that was cool. Yet something bugged me about her phraseology, “My brush with greatness.”

“Dustin Hoffman is a great actor,” I told her. “But when you say, ‘my brush with greatness,’ it sounds as if he is great and you are not, and you were lucky to touch greatness for a moment. In my opinion you are just as great as him. You are an outstanding massage therapist and an awesome person. It saddened me to hear you portray yourself as less than him. You are equally great in your own way. Who knows, maybe after his massage he phoned a friend and reported, “Let me tell you about my brush with greatness. . .”

My friend thanked me for my affirmation of her worth. Yet the lesson goes far beyond that one encounter. We have all have been taught that greatness lives outside of us and we need to rub up against it or import it so we can become great. That’s exactly the opposite of how true greatness operates. Magnificence resides within all of us, and we need but tap into it and bring it forth. We don’t need to brush with greatness; we need to simply brush from greatness.

People who brush from greatness, not toward it, are simultaneously humble and powerful. They recognize that the talent that flows through them is seeded from a Source far grander than their ego. When a reporter asked 12-year-old tennis sensation Jennifer Capriotti, “Do you intend to be the next Chris Evert?” she answered, “No, I intend to be the first Jennifer Capriotti.” Ten-year-old art prodigy Alexandra Nashita, called “the next Picasso,” affirmed, “The difference between me and others is that I am willing to do what I am good at.” Mozart put it this way: “It is when I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer . . . that ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them.”

In high school I envied the student body president. Dick Brown was good-looking and popular, he offered everyone a smile and kind word, and he had a cheerleader girlfriend. I liked Dick but had him on a pedestal for being in the in-crowd ― maybe its leader. By contrast, I judged myself as a nerd dithering on the outskirts of coolness.

Years later I bumped into Dick and we hashed over high school days. I confessed that I envied him for being in the in-crowd. He laughed and told me, “That’s weird ― I always thought you were the in-crowd and I was out. I envied you.”

There is a part of us that thinks we are not great, and a part of us that knows that greatness lives inside of us. The voice your listen to and act on will be the one that determines the results you generate. True greatness is not a goal you reach out to grab; it is an inherent gift you reach in to express.

Alan

You can't prepare to be yourself.

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You’re not Rich

Enough to be Poor

At a conference I was chatting with a woman who had grown up in Russia. As we spoke about wealth and poverty, she quoted a Russian folk phrase that, translated to English, means “I’m not rich enough to be poor.”

When I asked her about the meaning, she explained, “When you buy cheap things, cut corners, or do anything with an intention less than full quality, you think you are saving money. But in the long run, such an act will cost you more. Cheap things break and you have to repair or replace them. Business or personal relationships that represent compromise cost you more peace, joy, and money in the long run than if you had claimed excellence. Acts based on poverty thinking only create more poverty conditions. So you are not rich enough to be poor ― you cannot afford what living from a poverty mentality will ultimately cost you.”

Consider what in your current life represents a wealth mentality and what represents a poverty mentality ― not just money, but business, friendships, family, and relationships. If you were to proceed from enoughness rather than scarcity, what would you be doing differently?

You are rich enough to be rich, and the universe will prove it.

When you reframe problems

as projects, they will

cease to bother you

and begin to stimulate you.

How do you See?

14-year old Ben Underwood is a master of many things - skateboarding down the street, video games, and pillow fighting. No big deal, right? Actually, it is a big deal -- Ben is blind. Physically, since birth. Yet he has developed a kind of sonar that tells him where objects are -- and he doesn't miss.

You will be astounded at this amazing video, showing Ben doing all the things that sighted kids can do - and better (like beating his friends on video games.)

While scientists have their theories about Ben's extraordinary sonar capacities, I have mine. A Course in Miracles tells us that real sight is not of the eyes, but the mind. We are all quite psychic, or at least have the capacity to be. We can "see" things with our mind independent of what our eyes are seeing. I believe that, in addition to his highly sensitized use of sound vibrations, he employs inner vision.

What a phenomenal teaching that we are all totally unlimited!

Click here to watch Ben's amazing video.

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