If you knew their true intentions, would you still be hurt?

You think people's intentions are to hurt you—but what if you've been wrong all along? This one shift will change how you see people forever—and set you free

*This is the written version of ‘its not you’ podcast episode #64

You've heard the saying, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, it's true. All behavior, whether good or bad, has a positive intent behind it.

So when I say people don't do things to you, they do things for themselves...this is what I mean.

When you understand this, at your core, your life will change in ways you can't even imagine.

And here's why:

Most of us live our lives through the dictates of other people

• What will people think about me?
• What will they say about me?
• What will they do to me?
• Will they hurt me?
• Will they leave me?
• Will they abandon me?
• Will they reject me?
• Will they ridicule me?
• Will they laugh at me?

Oftentimes, this constant chattering is going on below the level of awareness.
Let me show you what I mean.

It's not very likely that someone who's preparing for an outing, is going around their house getting ready, saying out loud:

"I really want to wear this dress. But if I wear this dress, remember what happened last time? Last time, Gretchen - she just lost her cool and didn't think it was appropriate. But if I wear this dress, the gossip crew, they'll attack me.

Okay, what about a pantsuit? No, no, I can't do a pantsuit because that's too...it's not feminine enough.

Oh, and I really gotta watch what I say this time because, remember the last time when you said that thing and people were just losing their mind and you got backed into a corner?

Or that time when you mispronounced that guy's name and everybody was pissed because they thought you were mocking his name?"

This is a sliver of the type of dialog that's happening in your mind all the time. All day, every day, in fact.

And for some people, they're quite aware of it and they do their best to mitigate it. But for most people, it's like that pain in your back that you've had for so long that you don't even know is there anymore. But it still directs your behavior.

You can only bend so far with that pain, but you don't even think about it anymore because you've just gotten used to it. Well, that's what's going on here. This inner voice is directing your behavior, and you aren't even aware of it.

Using the same example of, let's say you're going out. If one of your concerns. If your inner dialog is going on about, what if I wear this, are they going to laugh at me?

That will overshadow what you really want to wear and force you to wear something less controversial. Or to wear something where maybe it won't draw attention to you so you don't have these awkward conversations where you might get rejected...or laughed at...or ridiculed.

Now, that right there is an example of an intention. A deeper intention.

The intention here is to dress differently than you would have liked so as to prevent consternation. In other words, you're choosing this dress instead of your preferred dress to protect yourself.

To protect yourself from consternation. Also notice this intention was done for you, to protect you. It's all about you. And even though this is a very mild example of intention, every intention has the same framework.

Meaning, it satisfies the person with the intention, and it's never about somebody else.

Now, you could argue, and many have, that it is about somebody else because the reason you're choosing the other dress is because of other people. You don't want to be in conflict with other people because of what they might say about how you dress.

But that's not what we're talking about here. We're specifically talking about an individual's intentions. And why they do what they do. How what they do has nothing to do with you.

So again, I'll play the devil's advocate. You could say:

"Yeah but... you just said it has nothing to do with the other person. But I'm choosing to wear this other dress because of the other person."

But it still funnels back to you what you are protecting yourself against.

I'm trying to drive this point home because this is where people get lost. And I get it, because I was one of those people.

It's very easy for us to point the finger at other people and blame other people for our behavior. And this is where we get stuck in life—or one of the areas we get stuck in life—because it's never about somebody else's behavior.

It's always about our own. And when we find out what our hidden internal intentions are, it just opens up a whole new world of understanding.
Let's flip this now.

Let's say you wore the dress that you wanted to wear, and you went to this outing—this party, we'll say. And in fact, you did get the consternation that you expected.

Somebody came and ripped you one, and ridiculed you in front of people. You could easily say, "She did this to me. She hurt my feelings. She...she... she."

Well, first of all, what I would say is:

Having hurt feelings is a you problem, not a she problem.

We cannot go through life expecting other people to cater to everything that hurts our feelings. But that aside, for her to attack you, such as she did, she too would have an intention for that.

Now, what might be her intention? Here's the good news:

It's not up to you to know what other people's intentions are.

I mean, they barely know them themselves. So you don't have to be an overnight shrink and dissect everybody's mens rea.

All you need to know — and accept— is she's doing it for herself. She, has some intention, that she that has nothing to do with you. And leave it at that.

But for shits and giggles, let's just go over a couple scenarios.

Maybe she is envious of you and is trying to shut you down and embarrass you in front of your peers so she looks good. In her mind she thinks it'll make her look good and make you look stupid.

Has nothing to do with you. You are feeling stupid. Or you are feeling embarrassed. But that is all within your control. You don't have to get sucked into her trap. And it is a trap.

Another scenario may be, she hates you so much that she figures at some point you caused her pain. And because she knows you get embarrassed easily, or you get hurt feelings easily, she's going to use those vulnerabilities against you in a moment like this.

Her intention is— to inflict whatever form of pain onto you that she feels you inflicted on her. Doing so makes her feel good.

It's all about her. Her good intention was to make herself feel better. Hence the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Her good intention was to stop her pain by inflicting pain on you.

And don't think this behavior is an anomaly.

We do this every day, all day. And this is another part of being true to yourself and coming back home to the true you. It's being honest with yourself about things like this.

About your behavior, about why you do what you do.
And when you are, your life changes for the better. Inner freedom and inner peace become normal to you.

And that's because you shift these counterintuitive intentions and behaviors to behaviors that are more in alignment with the life that you want.

Now, let's go to an extreme example. Let's use violence. Let's say you were hit as a kid. Spanked. I was. I still have the wooden spoon—actually, the one used to beat my ass. And I probably shouldn't be laughing about it, but here I am.

As a child, getting beaten by a wooden spoon means we are bad. We interpret that and maybe we were even told—you are a bad girl, you are bad. But even if those words weren't said, the interpretation in a child's mind is, I am bad. Therefore I deserve this.

What is the intention behind a parent who hits her kid? Again, there could be a thousand different intentions, but let's just give a couple of easy ones.

One: the parent is tired, Because they're tired, they're frustrated, and they just want the noise that you're making to stop. So that is an instant solution to their problem. And their problem right now is you talking too much.

Another different example might be you're playing out in the yard and you were, let's say you're playing with a baseball and the baseball hit a garden ornament of your neighbors and it broke.

And your mom or your dad or somebody beats you with this wooden spoon. Here's a couple of reasons that could have happened. One: Mom wants to keep peace with the neighbors and this act might just set them off.

So the intention behind the beating is, hopefully this pain will be severe enough that you will never put her in that position again where the neighbors don't like her.

It's all about self-protection at all costs.

Again, whatever you think of this example, there's a thousand more that could fill its place. But I'm driving the point home, hopefully that it never has anything to do with you.

Okay, so let's say you're that kid and you broke that garden thing. And let's say you were reckless. You didn't intentionally break it, but you were reckless. You knew you were being reckless. The point is you're still a kid.

There was other avenues that could have been taken. You could save up your allowance to buy a new one. There could have been some other thing worked out to rectify what you did, and it would have been a great life-learning lesson.

But the result was a beating instead. And the beating had nothing to do with you. It was what was going on in that parent's head and their intention to dissuade you from ever doing that again—so they can avoid any further negative interactions with the neighbor.

It could also be status. They fear that your actions are a reflection of their parenting. And they don't want to be judged and labeled a bad parent because judgment causes them pain.

Now, I'm going to say this again because it's worth repeating. And as I said earlier, this is where people fight me tooth and nail. And I get it because I was there too.

The message gets lost in the meaning. So what I'm trying to explain to you gets lost because people are so hung up on —and again, I get it because I was too. So no judgment— on "But they did this to me."

And if you talked to anybody and gave them the scenario that you just went through, they would agree with you. Yes, they did this to you. You have proof they did this to you. And they did.

But they didn't do it because of you.

They did it for themselves, for their own protection, whether they know it or not. Now, why is this so important? Because you give your power to them when you let them get to you.

Remember I said earlier, if somebody knows that you get your feelings hurt easily, they're going to use that against you. Which means you've given them your power and your permission to abuse you.

Here's a personal example of something that happened to me or that I went through many years ago:

And it's relevant because it's common. For many, many years, I had a deserving issue. If someone did something nice for me, I had to repay them 10 times over or I just stumbled in disbelief, wondering, why would anybody do something so nice for me.

And yes, this happened even with my closest friends. The deserving, you might know, is a very, very deep issue.

So even though I'm loud, boisterous, fun, funny, I say—well, what they say about me is— I call a spade a spade. Always have. But yet there was always still that deserving issue. And it came out in different ways, and this is one of them.

I live far, far away from where I was born and raised and got married. I still have my friends there. And one time when I went back, I stayed with a particular friend and her family. And when we hung out, it was great. We had fun and caught up and it was it was just great.

It was just like old times—like I'd never left. Now, the reason I was there was because I was visiting my dad in the nursing home. So what I would do was when I was out, I was out.

I didn't go back and forth, and come home for lunch...I was out for the whole day and I didn't come back until maybe an hour before bedtime ish.

And my reasoning for that was I didn't want to invade their space any more than I already had.

Let's face it, it's awkward when you have a routine in your day and somebody else is there and kind of messes it up a bit. It's awkward.

So I didn't want to be in their way.

And everything seemed all right. When I did come back, we would have our chats in the evenings and then mostly have coffee in the morning and our chats in the morning.

And then on my last night there, I think it was about 8:00 or something, I got in and it was cold. It was just ice-cold.

And then the husband, who I was also great friends with, asked me if I could find a ride to the airport with somebody else. And then I knew for sure something went awry. What the heck happened? I have no idea what's going on here.

One of the things we tend to do as human beings in situations like this or situations that we don't understand—is mind read. And almost every time it gets us in some sort of deep water.

Mind reading is when we make a bunch of shit up about what we think happened or what we think their reason was, or what we think they're thinking. And then our mind goes wild with that baseless assumption because we don't know.

And all manner of hell usually breaks loose because most often we're wrong. As expressed in this podcast so far. We don't know what another person's intentions are. So far be it from us to think that we can go in somebody's head and mind read.

Especially when they often don't even know why they're doing what they're doing. With that being said, mind reading is exactly what I did. Now I'm not going to get into all the stories that I concocted and the one that I finally latched onto...

And here's why:

Because I had a massive perspective shift when I had somebody stay with me not long after. They did exactly what I did. And in large part, that was staying away as long as possible.

So I did what every non-self-respecting person does, took it personally. And my inner dialog went something like this:

"Well, isn't that nice? They come all the way here to see me and they can't even be bothered to spend any time with me. Everybody else they're going to visit is more important. Oh, so I guess I'm only good enough for a free place to stay and a few meals here and there. That's quite a nice friend."

Turns out, their positive intention was not wanting to disrupt my life any more than they already had by being there. Now, they weren't a disruption, but this is what was going on in their head.

Exactly what my thought was when I stayed with my friend. It was having this experience myself, that enabled me or allowed me to create distance from their behavior that I internalized as hurtful.

In other words, I was given a clear-cut demonstration of my own behavior. Which opened the door for me to be able to see life through somebody else's worldview.

And you know what that does? It breeds compassion and understanding.

And in a world that seeks to divide with family and even friends that annoy the shit out of us, compassion and understanding, along with remembering that all behavior has a positive intent—and no matter how finely targeted, that behavior has nothing to do with you.

People are doing things for themselves, not to you.

Before I go, I just want to make mention of something. I realized that when making mention of my friend staying with me, I said that I did what any person who lacks self-respect would do.

Realizing after, that could have easily been displaced onto me talking about the friend that I stayed with. For her to be upset about the same thing I was upset with means I'm saying she lacks self-respect.

Well, I suppose that is what I'm saying.

Look, we need to start taking responsibility for our emotions and our behavior. And we cannot live our lives dependent upon other people to make us happy. We've got to find out what makes us happy and leave the rest.

Equally, understanding things like this— that there is a positive intent behind all behavior. Or as I refer to it, people don't do things to you, they do things for themselves...

Allows you to maintain personal autonomy and take your power back.