Some food for thought and my unnecessary 2 cents.

Through understanding my own toxic family, I have wondered what makes someone a good person.

Suppose a narcissist can lie and feign innocence (that’s totally believable to the outside world) while doing good things. How can we honestly tell if someone is a good person based solely on their actions?

Behaviors are a complex set of actions, either good, bad, or somewhere in the middle. If someone does nice things, does that make them a good person?

Intention matters

Behind every behavior is an intention — what that person hopes to achieve or accomplish. The intention is what I have been heavily looking towards in all relationships in my life.

I want to know that the person is genuine in their actions. The narcissist in my life has left me with this hypervigilant state — to always try and spot trouble early.

I don’t care if you’re nice or mean to me; I care about what your intentions are. I want to know that you have a good, verifiable reason for your actions towards me.

But is intention important to everyone?

To me, the intention is everything. It is what I want to shine through in all of my actions. Aside from intentions, seeing someone’s long-term behavior is the blueprint for how everything else will be.

I am hypervigilant. I want to make sure that I never go through the bad things that I have gone through in the past. But I can’t always stop that.

So tell me, Do intentions matter for you?

As originally posted on Medium