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Hey, hey, what's happening? Chad here, Fresh and Raw, episode six, talking about purity of intention; how to carry yourself with honesty and integrity.
This is such a great and important topic for you and for I, for all of us to succeed in business and life. To find our way for the waves to part for us in realizing our dreams and our objectives in all good things, and for the universe to join us in supporting them.
This is so, so important, purity of intention. Let me say this, too. These topics come up. These topics I talk about every day, they come up in discussion regularly in different discussions. But as they're coming up in discussion, I'm saying, "Oh, I got to come back to that, I got to make note of this, I got to talk about this because this is important insight and philosophy, and wisdom to share that has been garnered over years and years and years of exploration of our world, people, doing business, and all these great things in it.
So, purity of intention is so important to pay attention to because how pure we are in our intention to embark on a mission, to engage someone in business, to walk into a room and perform, and to enter into a business partnership and on and on and on; the purity of our intention in so doing is the gateway that defines our success or not in that endeavor.
Now why is that and what is that about?
Let me say this, after years and years and years of being involved in and around business, talking shop, and structuring deals, closing deals, working on business ventures, creative pursuits and all this stuff, one can very well see and/or sense, which are one and the same in many respects, where people are coming from. I've observed. And being an observer of people and their behaviors ever since I was really young because I found it fascinating. I still do find the behavior that people embark upon or the behavior that people exhibit in their journeys, and the choices they make and similar, provides unique insight, and inspiration, and creative ideas, and all kinds of stuff. So just to sit back and observe.
But what I've come to learn, and this has become I'd suggest one of my greatest strengths in business, is my ability to ascertain, to receive, and identify people's intention and people's motivation in what they're doing, as it particularly relates to business. I mean, this could relate to people in my life, this could relate to people I'm considering doing business with, people at the teller at the bank, or what have you. You can read people anywhere and finding those and recognizing, identifying those that are fully present with pure intention. "I am here to do X, I am here to do Y, I am here to do Zed." And for that what they're saying to be connected to that which they are doing is so important to find. To establishing long-term sustainable, fruitful, and mutually beneficial business arrangements, or relationships, or partnerships of other sorts, for success in our journeys, whatever they may be, achieving our goals and our missions, no matter what those might look like.
It's not just to evaluate others, it's also for us to bring purity of intention to our activities, because others are reading us the same way. This is the thing.
Here's an analogy. People go out looking for money. They go out looking to finance their business, they look to finance their operation. But what is your goal? What is your objective? Are you looking to just put a bunch of cash in your pocket? Are you looking for someone to finance you so you can just pay yourself? Are you looking to just have someone finance you so they can pay off all your debts and then you take the rest of the money? I mean people have a nose for this, right?
There are professional bankers and financiers that particularly look for clues or indicators that suggest that that is exactly what an individual is doing. Not necessarily you, I'm just saying in general, that this comes up. It comes up more often than you think. By people thinking that, "Hey, if I just raise this money, then all my problems go away." But what about the people you raised the money from? What is the intention of the money you raised? Well, the intention of the money raised is to grow the value of that wealth.
Very simply, you need to come at these things and we, collectively, need to come at these things, these objectives, and these ideas, and these insights we have, with this pure intention that then is genuine and that puts these types of concerns at ease.
Here's why. If we don't come at our world, our lives, our businesses and similar, with pure intention, then others will roadblock and subvert our paths, or they'll just walk away. I mean people vote with their feet, right? So, they'll just ignore you. They won't take your call. They won't be interested in your business, they won't be interested in going for dinner with you if you're talking about a date or a potential relationship. It is about pure, mutually interested connection, not just "what do you need from me?", or "what do I need from you?". It's very much about balance in that connection.
That purity of seeking balance and mutually beneficial result is what opens, I will suggest to you, someone up to participate with you in the dance. The dance could be any number of dances, but generally speaking, all of the dances inclusive with this statement. So how do you actually go about this on your day-to-day path? How do you approach those you seek to do business with? How do you approach those you seek to spend quality time with? How do you approach those that help you throughout your day, may it be a barista, or a server at a restaurant, or the clerk at a bank or similar, that you need help from on some level?
The server looks after you, brings you food. The barista is making your coffee (if you're a coffee drinker, which I'm not). If you're at the bank and they need to help you with a transaction, if you come at it from an intention of subverting the bank, of stealing from the bank, of cheaping out the server, of ... I don't know what you'd do, to be honest, for a barista at a coffee shop. Maybe just to dismiss the barista or belittle them or something. These are examples of not coming at a connection, or an opportunity to connect, without pure intention.
People will see how they've got something up their sleeve. You can see and smell often people that have this kind of trickerous intention in them. What do we do? We don't do business with them. We freeze those people out. We don't want them around us because they're in the business of burning people, and they're in the business of burning us if they've somehow gotten to the table. We have no interest in that being the case or them being around us whatsoever. So, we freeze them out.
Collectively, that happens all over the place, all the time, people determining whether they want to let you in or they don't. They're trying to determine whether they can trust you or not, they're trying to determine if you're actually someone that generally wants to do the work or do the business or be involved in a venture or project or has actually noble intentions with any of those same areas, or if everything's just opportunistic, and you're seeking just to rip them off or just take their money and run or similar.
These are the things that are going on. So, for us and today's topic being about purity of intention, it is about exploring and recognizing for ourselves the ways that we come at the world openly. Palms open, heart open, eyes open, with genuine interest and positive intention for those we connect with. If you're a bit of a lone wolf, or you feel out in kind of the weeds, and you feel people don't really connect with you, or you have a hard time socializing, it doesn't mean that everyone you meet is going to have pure intention, so it doesn't mean you need to become a doormat. But it does help, I will say, that you come with this pure intention to those types of connections and you're open with it. People open to those that are open, right? Be open and watch what happens.
Now, there's no expectation that you or we need to put up with those who come at us without pure intention. I call them out, personally. I call them out. I say, "I see this, this is not the way I roll, this is not something that will serve me. Your intentions, your interests here for my well-being are not inclusive of your strategies and what you are doing, and what you're working on, as it relates to me, and I'm not interested." I put that wall up, and I say no. “Not until you come and you meet me here in the land of pure intention where we can find truth and honesty with each other about that which we seek to embark upon, be that a relationship or a business proposition, or a venture, or similar, I can't help you.”
It's like the person you date, or the person you go on a date with, and they have this real money hungry sense about them, and they're not interested in you, they're interested in your money. You can sense this, and it's like, "You're only here because I have cash in my pocket." This happens all the time, obviously. This is a bit of a cliched scenario, but an easy one to describe. What do you do? You say, "Hey, that's not how I roll." You could say, "Okay, sure, whatever," and ignore it if you want, but how toxic is that going to be over time for you? How fulfilling is that going to be over time for you if you just let it roll and let it slide anyways? For myself, I say there's no way. I say it's not happening. If all you're interested in is my money, then there's nothing here. If my money goes, you're gone. If my money comes, you're here. Is that the barometer of someone who's connected with me on a level that I want to be connected with? Of course not.
Same in business. It happens all the time. Things are great, they're your friends. Things aren't great, they're not your friends. Well, in business things go up and down. So, you're telling me I'm a different person because the market went up versus the market went down? No, I'm the same person. But the market energies do actually come into play, and trends come into play, which take companies on runs. Does that mean that you're changing your behavior, I'm changing my behavior as a function of that? No, it does not. I walk with confidence and I walk with strength, and I hold my space with same. I honor my space and I stand up for my space when it's encroached upon as appropriate, but I still have pure intention.
When I embark on a business venture, I am there to build an exceptional business venture. When I raise money, it is with the intention of 10 X'ing that investment for people, plus, plus. When I step on the mark in an audition room, I am bringing the best of myself into that moment. Everything I have learned consciously and unconsciously over the course of my life, purely in that moment present to perform and to share my experiences. Perform isn't even the right word. To live authentically in alignment with the, as we said recently, the anthropology of the story with my own interpretations to it, to share same with those who will partake in the project and watch the program.
But I have to show up into that room with that pure intention to achieve that. If I'm in that room trying to achieve anything else, people will pick up on that. They will recognize that. They will be wary of that. They will be skeptical of that.
All these things come up. They come up in the boardroom. We sit down in a boardroom and we look at each other and say, "How's it going? What's going on? What are you about? What do you do? What's your business?"
What we're doing is we're feeling out everybody's angles. What's your angle here? What's your play? What's my play? This is how I'm going to win. How are you going to win? We go through that, and we break that down for each other so that the cards are right on the table. It is a form of poker, right? Happens all day long all over the place. We explore what makes up both of our ventures. Then we explore together how those could potentially assist each other, but if we're not clear on that, and we're not up front about that in those discussions, then I'm going to figure it out sooner or later.
You may very well as well, but I'm telling you that I've become very, very good at this, of figuring it out, of exploring, feeling into, and figuring out where people are coming from and what their angles are, and how they could potentially take me for a ride.
IKudos, tip of the hat to those that have been around me and mentored me in these ways and areas over the years because I've seen these things. I've been really tightened up about them, and they're exceptional skills to develop because then you can hold your own. You can go out and do your own business deals, you can go out and put your own ventures together and go stand for yourself in the room. You can smell what's going on.
Even in audition rooms I walk into, and I know if the casting team and the production is coming to me with good intention. My agent and I, we chat about this on occasion as well because I can smell that in the room the other way, too. You think you walk into an audition room and they have all the power. Well that's not necessarily the case, friends. Because I walk into those rooms and I say, "Hmm, I wonder. Something doesn't feel right in this room. They're too easy." I haven't even done anything yet and they're just far too casual. Then I've done something and they're still far too casual. It doesn't matter what I do. I could stand on my head and bark like a dog right now and nobody would flinch. They wouldn't flinch because they're indifferent to what I'm about to do. Well, they're indifferent to what I'm about to do because they've already cast the role I'm reading for. So why am I here?
There's a whole line of philosophy and theory about why I'm still there and why that's still valuable, and still seize the opportunity and all that good stuff. But there's an element of that that the read, because of my experience of intuitively reading rooms and people and circumstances like this with a filter for pure intention, a filter for what is real in front of me, and who I should work with and not, and use that as a barometer for engagement. I can see and sense and read that there's already something that's occurred in the room that has nothing to do with what I'm doing there. I can pick these things up.
Similar in a boardroom, right? I mean this is the same thing. What are these guys up to? Eventually, I'll figure it out. I always do. I actually always do. My intuition is very sharp, and with many, that closes them off. It closes them off because they don't have pure intentions. They don't want to tell me what they're up to because they know I'm all over them. There's not really much they can do about it, because if we're tied together in business already, and their intentions aren't pure, I'm going to call them on it. I should, because it's in everybody's best interest that I do. Same with you, and everybody's best interest that you do as well.
With others, I was chatting with earlier today about purity of intention, and just said, "Don't even bother." Don't show up thinking you're smarter than everybody else. Don't think you're cleverer than anyone else or everybody else. Don't think you're just going to show up and pull wool over people's eyes and go strut down the street and play games with people. There are people that have decades of experience, more than I do in even doing business at the level that I already am at doing and are wizards beyond your wildest at reading these types of things. The best you can do is show up as an open book, and be honest about your strengths, your weaknesses, your faults, your hopes, your dreams and your wishes.
Now, you don't need to share those with everybody, but you should share them with those that have pure intention, that have enough integrity and strength in and of themselves, no matter how much experience they have or not, to hold space for those details and characteristics of yourself, your path and your purpose in your journey to hold space for them and honor them, and not just use them against you. If you give those gifts to the wrong people, those are going to come back to haunt you because now you're showing too much of your hand, you're showing your full deck of cards, and so on and so forth. But be open.
We don't need to share absolutely everything, but we do want to share some of these things as appropriate, and want to share them with the right people because sharing these things with the right people who are of pure intention, they will meet you there with their intentions, and they will assist you all the way along your journey for you, and assisting you to fulfill all your wishes, dreams, and goals in your life. That's why they're there. They're like the angels of the world. They're the angels of the universe. They're just there, and they're pure, and they're like, "Yeah, let's go", and they're great.
Sometimes, remember everyone has an intention. That's what they're seeking. There's something they're seeking to achieve for mentoring and do anything, be that love, peace, security, happiness, wealth, abundance, growth, social standing, all these things. Some of these things can be positive and some of these things can be aligned a bit more negative or impure. But if they're honest about where they want to go, then there's a framework to trust. If they're not, then you can smell that, and you don't have to share anything about who you are beyond what's cursory. Because people like this who aren't of sound intention will use these sorts of things against you. It is just that simple.
So, all of this said, more of the story here. An important topic to touch on because you will see that this is how I come about everything. Those who know me and do business with me know this as well, that I come to all circumstances with pure intention. I come to build world-class businesses. I come to bring my best performances. I come to create my most valuable content, and I give it openly, and I share it broadly. I'm very open to do business with in that respect. But if we're in business together, as an example, and you are not coming to me or with me in pure intention of our mutual endeavors, then it's very obvious to me that you're wasting my time. You're trying to take my money, you disrespect me as an individual, my place where I stand and the work that I do, the business and businesses that I run, the skills that I have, so on and so on and so forth. I'm going to call you out.
Depending on the scope and the scale of what it is, we may or may not do business again. It's just that simple. It is not a right to do business with me, it is a privilege. It should be the same for you in all the ventures and scenarios that are related to this topic, relationships, business, otherwise, that you embark in and you entertain in your life as well. It is a privilege, not a right. Come to me with pure intention, I will meet you there with same. Come to me with an intention to rip me off or to treat me with disrespect and that's it. I don't put up with that crap and neither should you.
So, purity of intention, watch for it, look for it, read for it, be patient with it to see it where it is found.
You know it when you see it. Avoid it where it doesn’t exist. Guide those from it into purity of intention if they don't see it within themselves or what they're doing with themselves. Just let them know. It's very simple. You can just hold up the mirror and say, "You're not coming at this in a noble way, and that's not how we roll so forget about it until you do." Some people will never come to that level, but that's not your problem. That's not our problem. They'll arrive when they're meant to, but that doesn't mean we have to subject ourselves to what they're doing in the meantime, to our own detriment. No thank you very much.
So, there you go. Purity of intention. That's episode six, an important topic. I hope you got something out of this. Apply it to your world and your life.
Watch some of the things shift, think about who you're doing business with, think about the relationships you hold, the people you offer space to. Think of what they are doing to you. Are they feeding off of you or are they bringing value and magic and goodwill to your world? Are they helping you along your path? Are they helping you fulfill your purpose and carry yourself along your way in good journey?
Reflect on this. Make adjustments where required. Self-reflection, do this inner on your own as well. Where are you bringing sound, positive and good intention, pure intention, pure, positive intention to the world through your participation in it. Where are you not? Because here's the thing, and I'll repeat it again because it's so important. You think nobody sees that you might not be coming at it with pure intention, but you're only bullshitting yourself because everybody does. That's part of the problem.
So, come in it pure, be open, follow your dreams, trust your path, rock 'n roll, and everything you want and need will continue to come to you. That's how it works.
If you like my insights, let me know. Comment and share it with others that might benefit from it. As always, vibes are high. Potential is amazing and great.
This is Chad McMillan, episode six, Fresh and Raw. Purity of Intention. Have an amazing day, and we'll chat with you soon.
Chad McMillan is an independent venture capitalist and creative artist focused on personal growth and exponential entrepreneurship. Connect with Chad at chad@chadmc.com.
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