Josh Goldberg | Deeper Relationships & Story

The first is a word we don’t use that often in our programs but that I’ve spoken about in other videos and that word is intimacy. And at first glance I don’t like it that much because I guess it just feels very intimate but when I think about the definition, it really resonates with me. The definition of intimacy is fearlessly knowing and being known. Knowing someone else, their foibles, their struggles, their past, their challenges, their fears, their sadness, their joys and allowing someone else to know that about us as well. And one of the things that’s important to say about intimacy—and Martin Luther King Jr wrote a lot about that—is when we think about intimacy we kind of go straight towards romantic relationships but there’s at least two kinds of love. There’s eros which is romantic love like the cupid and there’s agape which is the sense of brotherly Love, sisterly love, sense of connection that’s common to the communities we serve. So when I think about Intimacy in my life and love in my life and relationships in my life as someone who lives primarily in the country and is said to be a monk, I have intimate relationships with people who I have no romantic relationships with. I have that agape with people I’m deeply connected with, people I’m willing to share my honest truth with without fear of being judged.

The second thing that we think is a critical part of being able to build relationships is empathy. It’s the ability to hear another person, to bear witness to their experience without trying to fix them, solve their problems, give them advice, but just to recognize what they’re experiencing and to be able to sit with them during that time. Empathy means you’re curious to understand how their struggle and experiences have impacted them.

The third thing we think about is accountability. We believe in the idea that you should say what you mean, you should mean what you say, and you shouldn’t say it mean. We also talk a lot about being kind, but one of the things that’s really interesting about kindness is that sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to speak hard truth.

I remember a time in my life when I was struggling, hanging out with the wrong kind of people and a buddy of mine said, “You know at some point Josh, you’re going to have to refind your moral compass.” It was a hard thing for him to say, it was a very hard thing for me to hear, but it was something that allowed me to stop and to take responsibility and accountability for my life and what I was doing. And so we think one of the things that actually nurtures and supports deeper relationships is accountability, insisting that people live up to what they are capable of rather than enabling them to live down to their worst impulses.

A fourth is authenticity, which is very much tied into this idea of intimacy. It’s being who you really are, it’s being your true self. When I first shifted from a corporate career into this arena, some of the people I was friends with were stunned, and I explained why this is important to me, I explained why I wanted to do it, and I was true to myself and I was also patient. I understood that for them, they needed a little more time than I did, and most of those people have come around including people very close to me. But I remained authentic and true to myself. I didn’t try to bend and shape myself to the needs and expectations and wants of other people. To people please is what I used to do.

The second part of what I want to focus on, in addition to the characteristics, is the connection between deeper relationships and the other areas of posttraumatic growth. So when you think about deeper relationships and its connection to new possibilities, when we start to walk new paths, we encounter new people and those new people have a profound effect on our life. They open up possibilities that weren’t present before. So for me I think about Ken Faulk, our chairman and our founder. It was meeting with Ken and connecting with him and building a deep and meaningful relationship over the course of time that has set me on a path that I never could have expected. When we start to connect with other people, when we enter other worlds, we start to connect with new people and be exposed to new possibilities all over the place. And sometimes the relationship itself represents the new possibility.

The second is deeper relationships and personal strength. Now, how does deeper relationships help you build personal strength? Well, one way is if you have people in your life who are supportive, who cheerlead for you, who hold you accountable, who insist that you’re principled, what you’re able to find is a deeper sense of resolve and strength.

When it comes to deeper relationships and appreciation for life, you know I want to reiterate this idea of appreciation for life being more than just gratitude. It is gratitude, but it’s importantly also about the priorities that shift in our life. As we walk the path from struggle to strength and growth, we change our priorities about what matters in our life and we realize that prioritizing and cultivating deeper relationships is meaningful and perhaps a very large reason for our existence on earth.

And the last is deeper relationships and spiritual and existential change. And when we think about spiritual and existential change, that’s big stuff that relates to our very existence and the nature of our existence, the meaning of life and death, our connection to the universe and the world as a whole. And deeper relationships enable us to have a better sense of what is deeply, deeply true for ourselves. We get the chance to surround ourselves with people who know us deeply, who know our strengths and our weaknesses, and we have the opportunity to engage in conversations and build relationships with people at levels that may surprise us.

So that’s why deeper relationships are so important in the context of your new story. They have to be. We are not islands as human beings. We are not. We are not destined or supposed to live in isolation. We’re supposed to connect. We are destined to find kindred spirits and people who can support us and who we can support. So while all of these domains are deeply meaningful to me and a big part of my life in this journey of PTG, I think the area of deeper relationships is where I’ve learned so much.

I grew up as a Jewish kid in Dallas, Texas but I never felt connected to other Jewish kids. I went to college and I was again, I had a small group of friends, but I never felt like I was part of a whole. I never felt like I had a community or a tribe. And when I began to become an honorary member of this community, to be supported and guided and connected with remarkable men and women who served in the military, in the first responder world, I felt viscerally for the first time in my life what it meant to have those deeper relationships and to feel part of a community. You all know what this looks like and you know how important it is. It’s a critical part of our lives and it’s a critical part of the story of our lives.

So reflect on deeper relationships in the story of your life. Reflect on what past experience demonstrates to you that you have the capacity and the capability to create and maintain deeper relationships. Reflect on what skills, strengths, and abilities you possess that best equip you to create and maintain those relationships, and what does your life look like and who are you when you’re creating and maintaining those deeper relationships.