It's Time to Become More INTENTIONAL

I just say real intention. If you're going to live each day with intention, you can't live each day with intention unless you know how you're going to evaluate your life. At the end, I must live each day with intention. Live each day with intention. Because you know what's so hard is you want to set that big ambition, but then you don't feel like you have permission to do it. So you're not intentional each day, like permission is a big challenge for so many people with this concept of ambition. I don't feel like I'm ready. I don't feel like I'm ripped enough. I don't have six pack abs. Who am I to do this for my community? I'm not in the best shape. I'm not the best smartest person. And you diminish yourself and you diminish your ambitions because you don't feel like you have permission. And some people wait their entire lives to ever activate fully their full powers because they feel like they haven't had permission. And some of you, be honest. How many of you ever struggled like you didn't feel like you were ready enough, right enough, deserved enough to pursue your dreams fully? Has anyone ever felt like that? Yeah, it's okay. Raise your hand. Be honest. If you're still waiting for that permission here at Summit, give it to yourself. No one else will ever do it for you. No one else will ever do it for you. If you need the help with it. Permission granted. I was blessed to get permission to chase my ambitions and have more intention each day by a car accident. Sometimes life gives us permission to pursue something more. If you don't know my story of intention, it was when I was a 19 year old kid. I had a good upbringing, as you heard. Then I met a girl in high school. We fell in love. We had that annoying kind of high school love. We went to college together, shared a car to school together. Everything was good. And then about halfway through college. I'm sorry. Halfway through the first semester of college, she discovered beer and other boys. And she cheated on me. We thought we were going to get married. That was my first infatuation, my first love. We lived in the same dorm together, we went to classes together. Everywhere I went, there she was. And then she broke my heart. And by the end of my freshman year of college, I became depressed and then suicidal. And I know some of you have been there before. My identity was so tied up in that relationship. Sometimes when a relationship falls apart, you fall apart. That was my story. I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't go to class. My friends would come by and try to motivate me, but I couldn't even operate in the world. I couldn't go to class because she was there. I didn't want to hang out with my friends because she was there. I didn't want to do anything because she was on my mind. So I planned ultimately to run away because that's what we do when it's hard. And so I became suicidal. And then one day I happened to open up the school newspaper and there was a full page ad there. And I'll never forget it. Marketing kind of changed my life. I never thought about it that way until later. But I opened up the school newspaper and there was a full page ad in color. And it was a white sandy beach, a perfect turquoise blue ocean, a bright beautiful sky, a palm tree. And across the top of the ad it said, escape, Because when you're hurt, that's what you want. And I was like, oh, I want to escape. And said summertime jobs in the Dominican Republic. Students needed. I didn't know where the Dominican Republic was. I was in Montana, but I knew the Dominican Republic was not in Montana and I knew she wasn't in the Dominican Republic. So I went and I got a job like, kind of like as a glorified tour guide on the island, you know, and, you know, we just take people around the island and things like that. And then one night, Kevin, my buddy and I, we hop into a car to go back to the place we were staying. We drop off a client. It's really late at night. Hop in this car and start flying down this new road they just paved. And here we go down this road, flat road, nice road, and we're going 85 miles an hour down the road. And I remember all the windows were down. And that beautiful Caribbean humid air is flying in. On the radio is a song by Tom Cochran called Life is the Highway. I want to ride it all night long. I'm singing it. We're singing this song out like life is coming back into me after all this depression. I'm feeling the humid air, the energy, the music, the movement. I'm just feeling alive. And then we came upon a corner that at least here in the United States would have had a big yellow sign. U turn arrow, 15 miles an hour. Watch out, sharp corner ahead. Slow down. New road. At the time a developing country. No sign. We round the corner at 85 miles an hour. And that corner became the turning point that brought Me here today. We go in the corner, Kevin grabs the wheel, Brandon, hold on. And I remember bracing and something in the next couple minutes happened for me that some of you experienced maybe before. And I braced and this terror went through me. And I didn't know about it until later if it was emotional or cognitive or spiritual or what happened exactly, but I remember that brace because when you're sliding into death's doorway, we see the headlights about to go off the road, we know we're not going to make the corner. And when you brace like that, that feeling, that sense, that energy in your spirit, it's something that's as. Did I live? If this is it, if this is my last moment, did I live my life? Not my spouse's life, not my friend's life, not my partner's life, not my parents life, not my school's life? Did I live my life fully, completely, authentically, joyously, or did I just ho hum through the day? 19 year old kid. I didn't like the answer to that. I hadn't been living just a month earlier. I'd been planning to take my life, not live it. The car starts sliding sideways and doing that weird shuddering and that weird slow motion thing happened and we slid into what was a little kind of brick and rock area that was for an irrigation ditch for a nearby sugar cane field. We hit it 85 miles an hour, pop voom. Threw the car up in the air, smack. I hit my head and I started seeing all these images and it wasn't like in the movies where it was like this omniscient viewpoint of my life and there's little Brendan growing up, you know, older and older and handsomer, but it was more. I just saw scenes of my life when I was surrounded by people that I cared for. From my vantage point. It wasn't like there's my mom and our 12th grade birthday, my 12th birthday party with my friends. It wasn't like there's little Brendan on the swing set in the backyard with the broken sort of concrete one pole lifts out of with his sister Helen. I didn't see me in either one. It was. I could feel myself sitting and the cake was there. My mom was singing my goofy songs she sings at our birthdays. Her friends gathered around. I felt myself on the swing looking over and I saw my sister next to me just swinging and smiling. This feeling of ka chunk, ka chunk, ka chunk. Which happened because we had that backyard swing set and that one pole that always comes out in a backyard swing set. You know what I'm talking about and what you end up seeing at the end, at least I did, was the people that you love, moments from your life when there was love there. And it makes you ask, did I love? Did I love openly, honestly and completely? Or did I shut down my heart because one time I got hurt? That's what happened for me. I got hurt. Did I love? I hadn't felt my heart in months. You know, sometimes when we get hurt, we build up these walls and we get proper and we get stoic and we get strong and to keep the people out. So we build up the big barriers to keep people out, the bad guys out, so they can't hurt us anymore. But sometimes when we build that barrier to keep out the bad guys who can't get in, the good guys, sometimes in our own self protection, we block out the very thing we so desperately desire. Did I love and felt my heart? The car flipped several times off the highway, hit the ground, rolled several times. I got knocked completely out. When I came to, Kevin is screaming at the top of his lungs, Brandon, Gala car, get out a car. I looked over, his eyes are wild and his head is open with a huge gash and blood everywhere all over his body. And he scrambles outside the driver's side window. I freak out. I don't know if the car is on fire, I don't know why he's screaming. I'm in shock. I go to get outside my window, but I can't. The door is smashed, there's no window. The whole car is smashed on top of me. And all I got is this hole in front of me, used to be the windshield. And I still feel today pulling myself through the windshield of this car and standing up and Kevin screaming at the top of his lungs, bleeding everywhere at the side of the car. And I feel like I'm going to pass out. And I look down, I'm standing on the crumpled hood of the car, all this blood is on me, coming out onto the floor or under the hood, and I feel like I'm going to pass out. And this fear hits me as this young kid realizing that life can end. And I remember just looking at it and he's screaming and everything is going in slow motion and there's blood going off the hood of the car. And I just remember feeling like this was it. And I saw the blood going off of my toes and I just thought, did I even matter? Was there a reason I was here? Was there a purpose to something? I saw the blood going off, I felt like I was going to pass out. And there happened to be a glint, sparkle in the blood at the end of the hood, reflection in the blood that was going off. And it made me look up and there was this bright, big, beautiful moon that night. I hadn't even seen it. And I felt something. I felt like all of a sudden when I saw it, that I was going to be okay. And as I looked up, if this fear had come down earlier, this kind of faith came up because I felt something. And I felt like the big guy had reached down from on high, this little kid on the Dominican Republic on this hood bleeding to death, and said, you're going to be all right. It's what I call. I felt like at the moment, I got life's scum digger, a second chance. Like the big guy had reached down to that young kid and said, here you go, kid. Life's golden ticket, a second chance. It's time to live. Because you can still live and you can still love and you can still matter. But now, you know, the clock is ticking. I remember getting that ticket, feeling like I was going to be okay. And I just remember feeling. Thinking how blessed I felt to be leaving alive. And I just thought, I won't earn this. And I got that. I got that second chance. I felt it. I passed out, got knocked out. First group of people who came through found me and Kevin, you know, humanity story right there. First group came through, robbed us. Second group came through, saved us, Humanity. We both survived. We're both okay. We're both still living. Lots of cuts and bruises and broken bones and terror and fear. But two kids. We got out. We survived. But I tell the story because at the end of our lives, we're all going to ask questions to evaluate whether or not we're happy with our life and how it turned out. I just say, real intention. If you're going to live each day with intention, you can't live each day with intention unless you know how you're going to evaluate your life at the end. So I say, maybe tonight you just bust out a journal and you just say, what questions would I ask at the end of my life to see if I'm happy with the answers? My questions ended up being, did I live? Did I love? Did I matter 21 years later? Even last night when I go to bed every night, I say, did I live today? Did I love today? Did I matter today? And it's that intention that brought me here. It's that intention that made me have a life that was fully alive. And heart, centered and focused on a mission of making a difference. But you gotta find your own questions. Maybe yours are different. But if you don't know your questions, you'll ask at the end of your life. To evaluate your life, you can't truly live intentionally into it. So you can be happy with the answers at the end. So find your questions. Then you can live with intention. Because every day I measure. Am I living and loving and mattering? Every day you gotta measure something. Something. That's how you know if you are being intentional. And many of you, without even knowing it, you were given a second chance at some point. Raise your hand if you ever felt like you got a second chance somehow. Yeah, look around the room. Look around the room. Most of us have gotten that. And the nice thing is, life isn't just one second chance. It's a series and an over and evergreen set of second chances. You gotta feel that and believe that tomorrow you can wake up and you can have a new fire in your belly. You can work a little harder. You can love more. You can make a difference. Because every single day is that second chance. And for that, we are all blessed.