Josh Goldberg | Deeper Relationships & Disclosure

As we talk about relationships between disclosure and deeper relationships, I want you to focus on why you struggle forming deep and meaningful relationships. And while we certainly don’t have all the answers, there’s a few thoughts and ideas we have about the things that inhibit our ability to create and maintain deeper relationships. The first is disconnection. One of the things that is absolutely true is the idea that the limiting factor in our capacity to do something with somebody else is our capacity to do it with ourselves. There’s a great quote from Dostoevsky, and he said that lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others. If we can’t be honest with ourselves, how are we going to be honest with other people? If we can’t connect with ourselves, how are we going to connect deeply with others? So this is an inside-out game. The extent to which we’re disconnected inside, the extent to which we don’t know ourselves all that well, is the extent to which we’re going to struggle to create and maintain those deeper relationships.

A second area of struggle in this area relates to our past training and experiences. We are all a function of our patterns and our conditioning. We do what we do, and often we don’t know why we do it. Carl Jung once said that “Until we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct our life and we’ll call it fate.” And what I think about when I think about that quote is this notion that we’re just living at the tip of the iceberg, just above the waterline. And we’re going through patterns and habits and ways of being without being particularly introspective about why we do what we do—why things excite us, why things bother us. When we get to the full iceberg and below the waterline, we start to understand ourselves more deeply. We understand our challenges and the things that we struggle with, and the things we find joy in. And we have a better capacity to relate to other human beings at a much deeper level, at a level that really fosters those deep and meaningful relationships.

If I’m walking around with a rucksack filled with all of those past trainings and experiences and challenges, what’s going to end up happening is it’s going to shape the way I react and engage with other people. Somebody’s going to say the wrong thing, and I’m going to react to them in a way that is fire and fury—that’s not reciprocal, that’s not relevant to the situation—rather than just saying, “Hey, I really didn’t like it when you said that.” When we keep dragging our past into our present, it makes our present and our relationships incredibly difficult. It makes it difficult for us to relate at a deep and meaningful level without feeling like history, in a negative sense, is repeating itself over and over again.

The other part that comes from these past trainings and experiences is a sense of betrayal, a lack of trust, a set of experiences where relationships that were supposed to be healthy and safe and nurturing weren’t. That caused us to distrust people in meaningful ways, and it prevents us from wanting to be close to other people. So when we think about those experiences, part of the PTG journey is to start anew.

Another thing that keeps us from deeper relationships is our willingness to be authentic and honest and to share our story in a way that allows us to connect deeply with somebody. Some people use the term “vulnerability”—that’s not my favorite word. I tend to think of the word “authenticity.” That I like to be the same person in every relationship that I have throughout my life. And if I can do that, I can build deep, meaningful, honest, and authentic relationships. But if I’m trying to be something to one person, another thing to somebody else, I can’t have a deep relationship because none of those folks know me. Because I might not even know myself.

And the last thing as we think about a list of things that might inhibit our ability to build deeper relationships is the sense of connection versus control. When we struggle, we tend to want to control things. We tend to want to manage and change other people. We tend to look outside, not inside. We try to control the things that take place. And when we do that, we push people away. People get frustrated. They don’t feel valued. They don’t feel seen. They feel controlled. They may say to you, “I’m not one of your soldiers. I’m not one of your officers.” And what we need to do is focus on connection—getting to know people by focusing on inputs, not outcomes.

I share a quote a lot from a guy named Carl Buehner, and I share it because it’s beautiful. And he said that “People will forget what you did and they’ll forget what you said, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.” Listening to people, seeing people for who they are, validating them for their experiences—those are the ways you build deeper relationships. I saw a quote recently that I thought was true. It said that “People aren’t complex—relationships between people are complex.” And I think deeper relationships are a struggle, but they’re also the thing on Earth that provides us with the greatest sense of value and fulfillment and joy. And if you think about your worst day and you think about your best day, I bet the reason why those were your worst day and your best day involves another human being. That’s why relationships are important, and it’s why they’re complex.

So I want you to take the time to think about the people in your life. Think about the way you treat relationships. Think about your mindset and your attitude, and your views about relationships, and reflect upon where you struggle with those things. Because enabling us to face the things that we struggle with is what allows us to change our fate and translate those circumstances to ones of destiny—where we get to choose. And as you do that, reflect on three questions: What causes you to struggle when it comes to creating and maintaining deeper relationships? What do you need to do to overcome those obstacles in terms of resources from the outside and resourcefulness from the inside? And what do you need to do to be able to successfully create and maintain deeper relationships?