What I learned from a dying man
Power of Confidential Partnership
The world lost a brilliant man last year that most of you reading this don’t know of. Scott Greene was an exceptionally gifted thinker, speaker, leader, and family man. He died of brain cancer in 2018 after serving for over two decades as a minister. Scott never let up on pushing himself and mastered challenges like becoming fluent in Chinese later in life.
One warm summer afternoon at a cafe in Berlin Germany, Scott said something to me that never left: “Joel, there are certain things you can only learn about yourself in relationship.” BAM. It cemented in me the belief that you cannot fully know yourself unless you are invested in relationships.
That’s why taking risks in the right relationships is so critical. Yes, it’s to achieve great things — things you could never achieve on your own. But more importantly, it’s about learning things about ourselves we would otherwise never learn. Imagine going through life and not discovering things about ourselves because no one ever asked the right question or made the right observation.
Think of who made you who you are. It wasn’t a program or a system or an organization that shaped you, but someone who you trusted who made you feel known, cared for, believed in – and loved in some way. That’s what changes our nature and deepens our soul.
This is why we have to constantly push ourselves socially because, as author David Brooks reminds us, “Social isolation is a core problem that underlies a lot of other social problems.”
Just remember, it’s easy to hide even in groups and not have the courage to be known.
I mentioned this last time in an interview with CEO Caroline Diani of DIANI Living and shared about unlocking potential and getting the right people involved in our lives. To read the full interview, click here.
If you are looking for this type of soul-expanding experience – then click here and let’s set up a conversation to see how that could work for you.