The Humbling Experience I Learned Watching Last Night’s Election

When you look at their intentions, it changes your perspective.

On today’s episode Russell talks about people having good intentions in the aftermath of the US election. He discusses a story he heard at a Tony Robbins event that illustrates why he feels people always have the best intentions in mind, even when they do horrible things.

Here are some interesting things to listen for in this episode:

• How overhearing a phone call made Russell realize that even someone who was voting for the opposite political party, still had good intentions.
• Why Russell believes that people don’t inherently have bad intentions.
• And how that has given Russell an invitation to continue to love friends and family even when he disagrees with their religious and political choices.

So listen below to hear Russell’s thoughts on the election and good intentions.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. I hope that you all had a good election night last night. Some probably good, some probably bad, some just confused in the middle. Totally understand that. You know what, this morning I woke up, the sun is shining. My little daughter, Norah did not want me to leave today, so she was crying when I left, she was sad. I drove around to the front of the house she was there and gave me a kiss. So that was….It made the whole day good.

So yesterday was kind of an interesting day. I don’t know if you follow Snapchat, or all the other channels were publishing stuff so you see kind of behind the scenes of what we’re doing. Part of Funnel Hacker TV, one of our episodes with this guy named Robert Jones, who’s super talented man in the beauty space. He was in town and we were filming some videos with him and it was just really cool day.

We werer working on his software and overall a really good day. It was the last free day I have until my book is done. I’m going in the office to lock myself down and do nothing but write my book. It was a fun day and then we came home and the election stuff was, we were eating dinner. And then the kids were all into the election because at school they’d been talking about it. They all had maps out and they were coloring the states as they went to red and blue. It was kind of a fun experience.

Robert and Bart and Sunny were all at our house, then they left and we just sat on the couch with the kids and watched the news. Just watching as the day unfolded. Obviously now at this point, we all know what happened, but it was kind of crazy. We were watching it and we all passed out on the couch. I woke up at about 1:00 or 1:30 in the morning, whenever it was that Trump was giving his speech talking about the fact that he’d won.

And I was watching it and I was like, “Wow.” It’s just kind of crazy. Two days ago the media convinced everyone that there was no way that he would win and then he wins. It was crazy. I was sitting there and I looked at Facebook because I wanted to see everyone’s responses. Honestly it was kind of sad. I saw friends on both sides, yelling at each other and fighting. I just felt kind of a sick feeling. And what was interesting a few hours earlier I had an experience that kind of put this whole crazy thing into perspective for me.

So I opened up Facebook live, and clicked play. I didn’t know what I was going to talk about, but I started talking. Some of you guys may have seen that. I want to kind of go back to that conversation because I think it’s important. I think I was half asleep, so I was watching it this morning and some of the stuff I said, didn’t make sense, wasn’t very concise. So this is my shot to make it permanent on the podcast and hopefully it’ll help some of you guys who are……wherever you may be in your journey right now, with this and with other things.

And basically what I talked about, a few hours earlier that night, Robert Jones and I got in my car and we driving from the office back to my home. And he came over for dinner along with Bart and Sunny. Robert is someone I have so much love and respect for. What he does, how he serves, the value he provides this world. And we obviously do not see eye to eye on some things.

If you look at me, as most of you know at this point, I’m a very devout Mormon on this side. And he’s got very different beliefs and things on the other side. Which is totally cool and it doesn’t bother me. I’ve got friends and family members and partners and things that they completely disagree with me on many things, I completely disagree with them on other things. And that’s why I think it was so important for me.

As we get in the car, we’re driving, he calls his significant other and they were talking, and they were obviously rooting for a different person than I was. I kind of overheard ten seconds of the conversation. They said basically, “Hopefully it will go good, say a prayer and pray for the best.” or something like that. And as I was driving there I was thinking, “Wow.” Because in my mind, I don’t know, I think we get into the heat and the marketing of the elections, which by the way has been really fun. We should do a whole marketing podcast on the election stuff later, could be really fun.

But we get into that and it’s funny because you start perceiving people, I’m thinking candidates specifically as evil. This person is evil because of this and this. And then the other side, this person is evil because……it’s almost how we start perceiving these people. I was thinking about that last night as I was saying prayers with my kids, and praying for what I thought was right for the country and looking at what Robert was praying for and it was completely different. The polar opposite of me. And that’s okay, because Robert’s not evil; the person he’s voting for is not evil. I’m not evil. We’re all acting out of what we think are the best intentions for us, our families, and the country.

And I started thinking more and more about that last night at 1 or 2 in the morning. It got kind of fuzzy after a while. But as I’m thinking this I’m like, you know what, all of us, and I would argue in every situation that we make our choices based on good intent. What we think is best is for us or for our family. Things like that. I don’t think people act out of malice or hate or spite. They do it sometimes, but not because they’re hateful, because they believe that that is the right intent.

Sorry the construction guy I drove past, and he’s giving me thumbs up for my car.

Anyway, they believe that that’s the right intent. I was thinking back, and I’m probably going to slaughter this story and I wish I knew the details better, but the principle’s the same. I was at a Tony Robins event and he was telling this story about one of the Day of destiny’s he was at. Day of destiny has 3 or 4 thousand people in the room and usually have partners and your working through things and you have workbooks.

I guess one of the attendees had written down that his plan was after the event he was going to go home and murder his wife and kids and then commit suicide. The guys partner was looking at his book and was like, “Wow, my partner is an evil person who’s trying to kill his wife and kids and I have to stop him. This guy’s got evil intentions.”

So he goes and finds some of the tony Robin’s staff and says, “Look, this guy is a psychopath over here and you guys should fix him.” So they’re going through the event and Tony finds out about it, and I don’t know the exact details, but Tony does interventions at his events. So he does an intervention because he knows that this guy is going to go home and slaughter his family. If you look at that from the outside, what do you think? How do you feel when I say that? That this man’s intent is to go home and slaughter his family and kill himself?

You think that this guy is a psychopath, this guy is evil, the worst of the worst. So Tony does this intervention with this guy and finding out why. What’s the purpose behind why he’s doing this? What is the underlying issue? Comes and works through the whole thing and finds out when this guy was young, and I can’t remember if his dad died or left or something. But this man’s father had left him and when his father left him, his whole life collapsed.

His mom, it was horrible for his mom, the kids, the family. So much so that he associated his dad leaving as worse than death. He wished he would have died because his life after his dad left was so painful and so horrible, that death for him would have been a release. So this man was in a situation now where he was in a marriage or family that he was not happy with and he knew that he needed to leave.

Whatever that looked like, I don’t know the details. But as he was looking at that he was thinking about his kids that he loved so much. I love my kids, I love my wife, but I have to leave. But if I leave it would be better for them to be dead than for me to leave. Because if I leave it will destroy their life; but I have to leave. So because I love my kids and wife so much, I have to kill them so they don’t go through the pain that I went through. That was his perception of the world.

When you hear it from that lens you’re like, “Wow, this guy, yes, the method and the process were wrong, but the intentions were good.” He honestly thought this is what he needed to do to save his wife and kids.

I think about that with all of us. I don’t think people inherently have bad intentions. I look at history. And I don’t know these people; let’s say the worst of the worst. I think about Hitler and I think about any of these people, what they did was horrifically bad. No excuse, wrong and evil. But in their minds, their intentions were probably not bad. This is what we need to do. The lens that I’m viewing this world through, this is how I’m going to make the world a better place. Yes, the lens and direction were wrong. I’m not excusing that because it’s horrible what happened. But their intention was probably good. And maybe there’s situations where people just really do have bad intentions, it’s probably there, but I think that for the majority, 99.999999% we have good intentions and that’s why we make the decisions we do. What we think is best for us.

I think about, for me, I have close friends and family members who’ve left the church that I love. There’s times that I get sad and angry and frustrated, all those kinds of things, but I look at them and I love them and I love their families. I look at that and I’m like, despite the fact that I don’t feel the direction they’re going is right, I can love them because they have good intentions. They’re not doing this out of malice or hate or anything. It’s because they feel like for them, this is the right direction. So I have to respect that even though I disagree with it because it’s their good intentions. They’re trying to do what’s best with the information they have.

It’s the same with politics, religion. It’s the same with, I think most things. So I hope that as this political hailstorm has ended, that as we’re looking around at our candidates and our friends and family members and people around us who disagree with what we’ve picked, that we remember that. They didn’t pick it because they’re evil, they didn’t pick it because they hate things. They picked it because for them, that was……the intentions were right. They honestly felt that that is the best thing for them.

And I think if we look at that through there, hopefully it will not divide us but make it have more love and respect for each other. But it’s hard. I get that, I understand that, especially when you feel people are doing things that don’t make sense and you don’t agree with it. And sometimes it makes you cry because it’s so painful. We can still love them because we know that they have pure intentions. That’s the key.

I hope that helps. It helped me yesterday. Like I said, when Robert made that comment when he was in my car and I heard it, it gave me a change of heart and more love and respect for him and just for everyone around me. And I hope that this helps you and all of us as well. That’s what I got.

Anyway, now the elections are done, it’s time for us all to get back to work. Because despite the fact that we all voted, no offense, none of your votes really even matter. There was no election, it came down to two people.  Anyway, just joking. The only thing that really matters is what we do, what we give, how we serve. So I recommend all you guys focus on that and continue to have good intentions and continue to try and change the world in the way that you see as right. And as you do that, good things will happen. With that said, appreciate you all. Have an amazing day and I’ll talk to you guys all again, hopefully tomorrow. Bye everybody.