In my work with men I have found myself telling men that they are “good men” but not great men. I have been pleasantly surprised how this phraseology has resonated with men. Somehow, they seem to understand that, however good they are, they can be great. In this blog I will attempt to discuss “goodness” in men, potential “greatness”, what these words mean, and how men some men achieve greatness, and how men have achieved greatness. I apologize for my attention to men in this regard of goodness and greatness as I mean no disservice to women but rather to honor my understanding of men. I leave it to others to examine this matter for women. Please allow me to use the masculine pronoun most of the time.

What is “goodness” in men

The word goodness, like so many other important words in the psychological dictionary, is undefined. Don’t be concerned. In my mind, the most important aspects of psychology are undefined, like the terms love, truth, and even God. Furthermore, the basic ingredients of physics, time, distance, and mass, are also undefined. We understand something that is undefined by observing it the way we observe time or love, not in a rigid definition of such things. Goodness is like that: we know it when we feel it and we know it when we see it.

Having said that goodness is undefined, we can look at some ingredients and results of goodness. The basic ingredient of being goodness in a person is the result of that person having a good sense of self. Oops, we’ve used another undefined term, but hopefully you can ride with me on this one because the concept of self is pretty basic to psychological functioning. While it is undefined, self refers to the essence of a person, which might be called spirit or soul. Importantly, a person with basic goodness has a sense of his/her “self” (or soul, or spirit). Importantly, if I have a sense of self, I will have a sense that there is something good inside of me. This goodness is something like feeling a kind of perfection in me. This feeling of goodness or self is not the same as perfect speech or activity, both of which are often imperfect, just as the words I am writing this very moment are imperfect. A person with a sense of goodness knows, perhaps without words, that inside of him/her there is a kind of perfect something. We call it self.

Beyond feeling this goodness, good people do good things and say good things. In other words, their goodness is reflected in what they say or do. The saying or doing good things is not the core of goodness but rather the result of goodness. In fact, the more a person feels his/her inner goodness, the more they will say and do good things.

I often speak to men about their basic goodness, or they’re being “a good person” or sometimes “a very good person.” Having said that, I often suggest to the man that however good they are, they can be great. What does that mean?

Greatness

Greatness is another undefined term that you can understand and use by seeing the result of greatness. Basically, and importantly, greatness is achieved when a person (a good person to start) has got beyond himself. This is tricky to explain because I suggested that goodness is achieved when a person knows himself and accepts himself. Greatness can only be achieved after a man (or person) has this sense of the goodness of his soul and the understanding that his self (soul, spirit) is perfect in its basic construction. When a person has this feeling of goodness and inner perfection, he is then finds a way to move beyond self. Moving beyond self does not mean that you abandon yourself, but rather that you use your self/soul/spirit in some kind of way that I define as great.

Greatness is usually demonstrated by some kind of activity that helps humankind in some way. This can be creating a masterful piece of art, solving the problem of nuclear fusion, writing a book, or finding a way to make trash collecting more efficient and productive, both for the workers and for the customers who choose to recycle. There are many other forms of greatness that might now actually show on the surface. A great person may devote his life entirely to parenting an impaired child or in some kind of volunteer work. The key in all of this is what I call a feeling, “This is not about me. It is about serving the world in some way.”

Understandably, the result do greatness may be fame and fortune but for the truly great person neither of these is important. Very important, however, is for the good-to-great person to overcome anger and fear. A good example of a great person is that he is not worried at all about what people think of him because his focus is on being great and doing something great. This is very hard to achieve as most men are too quick to anger and many hold a deep-seated fear that shows itself directly in anxiety or indirectly in addiction and avoidance.

Some examples

These are real men but their names and stations in life have been altered to protect their privacy.

• Jack is a semi-retired broker who is probably a millionaire or more. He has always been hard-working, honest, and faithful to his wife. He has had an inclination to anger and a kind of sexual addiction that showed itself in undue sexual pressure with his wife. Greatness for Jack, as I told him, would be to overcome anger entirely, treat his wife with respect. He appears to be quite demanding as he has been in charge of all of his life, his wife, his kids, and his work all his life. And, oh, by the way, not to give in to her.
• Sam is a pastor, a truly good man who has served in the ministry for 50 plus years, quite successfully. He has had a financial problem that has plagued him all his wife shown most specifically in his having been unable to say “no” to his wife. He also has suffered low self-esteem that no one knows but me (and now his wife), which led to his intense fear of hurting his wife and having her disappointed in him. Greatness for Sam would be to be true to himself, honest, and slowly erase the feeling that something is wrong with him.
• Peter is a retired police officer who served his community for decades, lastly as chief of police. He has fallen into a tendency to be irritable and not particularly honest about his medical/physical life. Greatness for Peter is to be honest, first with himself and then with his wife. Then he would be able to transfer some his former greatness into his new life, which is not family, kids, grandkids, and perhaps other activities.
• Brad is a successful businessman but had a lifelong tendency to be angry after trying hard to achieve harmony. In fact, when he can’t find harmony, he explodes, a phenomenon that is quite common among harmony-based people. Greatness for him is to reduce anger entirely, develop a better self-esteem and acceptance of his limitations and mistakes. Then he would need to deal effectively with his wife who, sadly, like many wives, is often critical of him.
• Tom is quite bright, achieved a master’s degree in his chosen profession but has been unsuccessful in his profession and in all of his relationships. His goodness is composed of intelligence, integrity, truth, and good work. His downfall is the feeling that he has to be perfect so he is harder on himself than anyone else. He has been fired several times because of his intransigence. First, he has to find his basic goodness, that followed by finding a way to enter his profession and succeed so that he can better the world.

Find your goodness. Find your inner perfection. Get some help to do that. Then you will be able to feel so good about yourself that you forget about yourself. Then you are a great man.