I was the opening keynote in Denver a few years ago.
My talk was based on the fraud I committed against a Fortune 100 company.
A gentleman asked me a question after I stepped off the stage that’s stuck with me ever since.
“Do good people commit fraud?”
Before I could open my mouth, he immediately followed it with another question.
“Do you believe you were a good person when you were committing fraud?”
I answered by telling him this.
I lived in a townhouse/condominium community while I was committing the fraud. It was brand-new construction: everyone living there was the first to move in.
We lived in the condo section, three buildings arranged in a U shape around a beautiful courtyard.
Each building had four levels, including a garage, one elevator, and two stairwells at opposite ends.
As with many new construction projects, there were glitches.
One of our glitches was the fire alarm system.
It would go off randomly in the middle of the night, and hundreds of residents would gather in the courtyard, waiting for the fire department to give the all-clear.
Many of my neighbors were elderly, and because you’re not supposed to use elevators during a fire, they had to take the stairs.
Every time the alarm sounded, after making sure my now ex-wife was safe, I would run through all three buildings, all four floors, and both stairwells, checking to make sure none of the elderly residents had fallen, gotten hurt, or were stuck.
Before we realized the alarms were a construction issue, I believed I was entering potentially burning buildings.
I never hesitated.
My actions flowed naturally.
I felt a profound feeling of gratitude that I could do this for our neighbors and friends.
When I finished the story, the gentleman replied:
“That’s a good person.”
I was neither a good person nor a bad person.
I was a person doing something good and serving others.
Simultaneously, I was a person committing fraud and lying to myself and all those around me.
Both things were true at the same time. And one wasn’t done to offset the other.
That’s exactly what makes this so dangerous to misunderstand.
The same human being capable of profound self-abandonment and wrongdoing was also capable of courage and service.
We love to label, we love to make distinctions, but this isn’t “good me” versus “bad me.”
It was all me.
The distinction to focus on is this:
What identity structure was organizing my behavior in that moment?
In the fire alarm situation, my identity wasn’t threatened, and I didn’t feel at risk.
There was no fear of shame; I wasn’t trying to protect my worth or manage my image.
Entering what I initially thought was a burning building was risky, but my actions were a natural expression of part of my identity.
Do what I can to help others.
So service flowed naturally; I can’t envision a world where I don’t do that.
The decision was embodied, clean, immediate, and aligned with who I naturally am.
But during the fraud, my identity, who I thought I needed to be, felt as though it was at risk.
I experienced the fear of being exposed as not enough and not capable as existential.
Who I thought I needed to be was falling apart.
The architecture built to protect my imprisoning beliefs from exposure was activated.
And I chose accordingly, rationalizing my way through what I knew was wrong.
But all of it was still me.
I was one human being operating through different identity structures under different conditions.
The decisions came from me, and me alone.
That’s the part I need to make unmistakably clear.
Understanding why we make decisions does not absolve us of responsibility for them.
It deepens responsibility.
Because now we can no longer say:
“I don’t know why I do this.”
Now we begin to see the architecture underlying our choices, especially when those choices run counter to what we know is right.
We begin to see the fears, beliefs, and adaptations organizing our behavior in real time.
And once we can see them, we become responsible for our relationship to them.
Self-authorship is not the denial of conditioning.
It’s the conscious responsibility to see it, understand it, and choose anyway.
Regardless of which version of us makes the decision, we are still responsible for the lives those decisions create.
And one of the simplest guardrails I know for making embodied decisions instead of self-abandoning decisions is this:
Embodied decisions require zero rationalization.
Self-abandoning decisions always require a rationalization.
Rationalization is the moment we trade alignment for emotional protection and try to convince ourselves it was the right decision.
Life isn’t something we need to convince ourselves of; it’s an experience we create.
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