A different kind of pattern

Eckhart Tolle on egoic patterns (A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose)

[page 74] The particular egoic patterns that you react to most strongly in others and misperceive as their identity tend to be the same patterns that are also in you, but that you are unable or unwilling to detect within yourself. ... Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.

[page 75] Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.

Greatness

I read somewhere (in a book, I think): the greatness of a person is measured by how well they treat those who can't help them or give them anything of value

Here is one that popped into my head: the greatness of a person is measured by how easily they give up something they absolutely love and cherish, to help another. [How easily can they give up their comfortableness to help another.]