The thing that surprised me the most when working with criminals is: nearly all of them see themselves as a good person and they’ve got a big story about why they did this bad act.

One of the coolest dudes I’ve ever worked with was a murderer.

He got a life sentence, but he got out on parole, and I was working with him.

His backstory was: somebody raped his sister and he went and found that guy and shot him. According to him, everybody praises him for this—he was a hero in jail for protecting his family, so to speak.

But he said: “No, nobody should praise me for this because in doing this I gave my sister a life sentence as well. Me shooting that guy wasn’t for my sister I can’t protect her, she’s already been raped. That was just vengeance for me and all it did is make her feel guilty because now she’s lost her brother as well as being raped.”

What he was basically saying is: he’s going to prison, she feels like it’s her fault and what was he was really trying to do is just satisfy some vengeful urge.

Ultimately, he harmed his sister, which goes against his beliefs. If he had stopped and thought to himself—”What’s best for my sister?”, he would have never gone and shot that guy.

He would have just comforted his sister and called the police.

Similarly, when you catch yourself doing a behaviour that you have to tell yourself a big story about, understand: if you’d done the right thing you wouldn’t need the big story.

There’s a part of you that doesn’t like what you did, and you have to accept that.

To dive deeper into this topic, check out the original video here: