A little lesson I was reminded of yesterday, when dealing with a very difficult circumstance.
On this episode Russell talks about intentions and why he thinks everybody has good intentions. He gives a few examples of why he believes that to be true.
So listen below to hear why Russell thinks people always have good intentions.
Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Hey everybody, so I’m driving right alongside the other car my kids and my wife are in and going to the Little Gym. They just drove past. So that’s exciting.
Anyway, I wanted to say hi to everybody today. And I’ve got an important lesson I think. Yesterday started out awesome, and then it ended out really weird. I’m not going to get into details of the weirdness because it doesn’t really matter, but some weird stuff happened. It was really weird. So this took a good two or three hours of my life away from me, while I was trying to resolve things that were just weird. So there you go. There’s the weirdness that you’re all wondering what in the world I’m talking about. I’m not going to get into details even though it’d be fun to. That’s a rant for another day.
What I wanted to talk about is my thought, this thought kept coming to my head during this process. I’m grateful for this thought because it helped me to respond a little differently and I think it was valuable so I wanted to share it with you guys today. And it’s all about intentions. What are people’s intentions? What are your intentions? What are people’s intentions? And not so much that people with good intention or bad intentions, but I’m going to argue today that everybody goes towards having good intentions. I know it seems backwards, but even people that are doing really, really bad stuff, I think they have good intentions.
Not to flash back to Star Wars or anything, but my kids we took them to watch Star Wars part 7 a couple of weeks ago and then I was trying to explain to them on the drive over about the whole story about Anakin, Darth Vader, Luke and Leia, so that they’d have some context. Then they wanted to see all the movies so we watched all the movies. I watched them and as The emperor and as Anakin became Darth Vader in part 3, and his goals weren’t evil right? He had to go to the dark side of the force and going about the goals the wrong way, but Anakin’s whole goal was he wanted to restore peace for the galaxy. He had good intentions right? He just felt that this was a better way to get those intentions. I think a lot of times we look at people and we think that they have these bad intentions. He’s trying to screw me over, he’s trying to hurt me, or whatever it might be. But I don’t think people do that, I think that about people as a whole, not most people but all people.
And I think the first time I really got this was at Date with Destiny with my man, Tony Robbins. And he was telling a story that was interesting. He was talking about this concept of intentions and he kind of said, “People always act out of the best intentions.” I was like, “Whatever dude. People have screwed me over all the time. People have done things like, they have bad intentions.” And he was arguing, “No, people always move towards good intentions, sometimes the path they choose effects other people negatively, but they’re always moving towards good intentions.” A story he told, he said he was at Date with Destiny a few years back or whatever, and they do different exercises, if you’ve been to that program, you write down different things. I guess one of the attendees was writing out stuff in the book that he was planning on mass murdering his entire family.
So the partner he was sharing his thoughts to, during the breakout sessions, starts panicking like, “Oh my gosh, this guy is about to kill his entire family.” So he ran up to Tony between the break, this is the work…I can’t remember if he gave him the work book or just told him about, but “There’s a guy in the audience who’s planning on killing his entire family and he’s mapping out during this presentation.” And Tony obviously is alarmed, he used it as a teaching experience and finds out who the guy is and brings him up on stage and tries to figure out why this is happening. He hears something like, hey this dude’s about to go kill his wife and kids, that’s guys got bad intentions, he is a horrible person. In our mind, we just cast him as this horrible person doing this horrible thing. But when Tony brought him on stage and started talking and going through this whole process and figured out why was he going to do that, the reason was that when he was a kid, his father had left. His father had left him and his wife or excuse me, his mom and brothers and sisters. And in his mind, it destroyed his life. It was the worst thing on earth, his father leaving. So much so that he wished he would have died. Because it was such a bad experience it destroyed his childhood, it destroyed his older life. Everything bad came from that one pivotal thing, when his dad left.
And his dad was at spot now where he wanted to leave. He wanted to either leave or commit suicide, or something. He wanted to leave himself from the world, but he knew if he did that he would cause so much pain to his wife and his kids. The same thing he went through as a kid. That pain was worse than the pain of losing a father and he did not want his kids and his wife to have to endure that pain, cause it was so intense for him. So his solution, “Well if I kill my wife and my kids they won’t have to go through that pain that I went through as a kid, and I’ll be saving them from this thing.”
And you listen to that and you realize that as twisted as the outcome was for this thing, he did it because he had good intentions, he thought that was the right thing to do. And I started looking around at people and business people and family people. People that make decisions that don’t make sense and you feel like it’s Anakin Skywalker, they’re going to the dark side. And maybe they are and maybe their intentions aren’t, not the intentions, maybe the direction and what is happening isn’t right. And you feel it’s wrong and it scares you and it makes you nervous and unsure, but I honestly believe that everyone does what they do out of good intentions. They think that they’re doing the right thing for them or their family or whatever.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that they are. Like Darth Vader becoming the Sith Lord of the entire universe was not a good thing for everybody. But he thought it was the right way, it wasn’t, he was trying to become evil. He was trying to do something but he went about the wrong way, but his intentions were right. And I think that if we use that lens when we talk to people, and we realize that even though what they are doing or saying or being completely goes against what you believe and that you know is right, doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re a bad person. They have good intentions; they’re doing it because a reason that have convinced themselves of is right. And I think that when we look at people and situations through that lens, hopefully it gives us a different perspective and hopefully we judge them and the situation differently.
It’s hard. Its hard cause in your mind they’re still wrong. You know what I mean? But I think when you understand the intentions right, it gives you the ability to still love that person, even if they hate you. Because, you realize that what they’re doing is not out of spite or out of hate or out of whatever it is. It began with the positive intentions. So, there you go.
You may think I’m crazy. You may think, “Nope, Russell that dude’s got bad intentions over there.” But I think that if we sit back and we try to look at it though a different lens we’ll find interesting things. So I hope that helps a little bit. It helped me last night when I was dealing with some really strange things that I didn’t enjoy dealing with. But realizing that people were overreacting the way that they did, or attacking the way they did, were not doing it out of spite or out of hate, but out of what they thought was good intentions for them. I can love them and respect them for that, even if I disagree with the route and the path, but I definitely understand a little more why. And I hope that that lesson serves you guys as well.
That’s it for today. Appreciate you all, have a great day. Make sure you don’t choose the dark side, even if your intentions are pure. Anakin could have done so much good if he just would have not been evil. But there you go. Alright, guys. Appreciate you all have an amazing night, or an amazing day, whenever you’re listening to this, and I’ll talk to you all again soon. Bye.
Hi Russell. Great story… It makes a lot of sense and it actually helped me with the way that I have been looking at a situation in my life. It’s oddly similar. Let me explain. I was brought into this world by my mother. Everyone can agree with that.
My grandparents took me away from her at birth. ( They saw my mother not fit to raise children ),so essentially I was raised by them, as with my older brother. He was 6 or 8 months old when they took him from her. She was doing very obvious things to force my grandparents to take such massive action.
My grandparents had and raised 8, yes 8 children of their own, and had moved on into their adult lives and started raising their own families.
The family grew and grew. I had over around 25 cousins and we all became very close.
As my brother and I started to grow, the aunt’s and uncle’s started looking at us a little differently. I would hear whispers, ( Robby and Gary are so spoiled ), things of that nature. I didn’t pay any attention to it. I looked at my grandparents as my mom and dad. I believe they had, and some still to this day have resentment towards us. Well, I can only speak for myself but I think they were jealous in a way.
Let me get back to where I think I have gotten some value AND clarity from your story, but first I have to finish the chapter or it will not make any sense to anyone.
At age 16, my grampa died from a massive heart-attack in our home. Very very sad time in my life, I had just lost my dad. We all did. I was a junior in high school and it happened on a Monday afternoon. I remember one of my cousins come into the conference room where we were watching the game film from the football game we played the previous Friday night. I could clearly see that she was crying. Coach says, CLOUD, your excused. She took me out into the hall, put her hand on my shoulder and said, Gary, Grampa had a heart-attack, he’s gone. It didn’t seem real. I said, well is he alright? How bad is it? What hospital? She again said he passed away.
Things started to change after the matriarch of the family had passed on. One of my aunt’s moved in. She was an alcoholic, but I thought it was nice having her their. We all were grieving. She stayed for a month or so, then moved back home.
I gramma was in such sadness.
3 years had gone by and I was now 18. It was just me and gramma.
One morning, I was on the phone with a girlfriend at the time. I headed to the kitchen to get something to drink, ( Tang ) I believe it was and that’s when I noticed her. My gramma was bent over, and I swear, it looked like see was looking for something under the T.V. and I says, GRAMMA, what are you looking for?? She did not respond. I rushed over to her and rolled her onto to back. She wasn’t breathing. I began CPR the best way I knew how. I ran and dialed 911. Then Robby stopped by, and he started freaking out. Our neighbor ran over and we were all performing CPR. Finally, the ambulance came and rushed her to the ER. They got resuscitated but she was in a coma. We started praying for a miracle. But it never came. After a month of being on a ventilator, the doctors said there is nothing more they could do, she will be severally brain damaged if she ever did come out of the coma. They took her off the machine and passed away peacefully.
So both gramma and grampa are gone now, what do we do? My aunt’s and uncle’s without hesitation, threw me and my brother for her death, even my birth mother. The family was in turmoil and quickly sold the house, divided whatever money she had in savings, her insurance everything and threw me out into the street. I was an 18 year old kid with nothing and nowhere ahead of me.
My gramma was diabetic, undiagnosed as it was discovered and my gramma never had a doctor. I don’t have a memory of her even seeing a doctor for anything in my lifetime. Nevertheless, they needed someone to point the finger at and it was me and my brother. It still bothers me to this day and that’s why I had to comment on this story. It’s because it hit home.
Now, I’m 46 years old. Have a wife, 3 beautiful and wonderful children.
I truly believe my mother’s intentions aren’t always bad, she can be a very loving person, but why can’t she submit to the fact that I was raised by someone other than her, and goes as well for brothers and sisters. I didn’t ask for this. One thing is for certain, some, not all, just a few, their intentions were bad after throwing me out in the street. I believe that they wanted to see me in pain. They have seen. I still struggle with this, it’s obvious. I still stay in contact with my cousins and they know that their parents acted hastily towards my brother and I. I’ve even tried to reach out just say hello, how have you been, how are you… I think I got side tracked here and I offer my apologies, but just wanted to tell my story here and how the post affected me to reply. I know that we all loved one another in days past and know that, in my case, I never intended to get some sort of retribution to those that hurt and scarred me. I’m just not that way, but others are.
Thanks.