Weekly Doses of Pop-up Psych

Scoring Victory: Breaking Down Why Success Can Be the Ultimate Form of Revenge

When I was in my mid-20’s, I had a broken heart from an ended romantic relationship.  Although “it was for the best”, it still hurt a lot. When we broke up, I felt stuck in my job as a jail counselor.  I desperately needed a change and had talked about leaving my job for over a year, but didn’t do anything about it. After a few months of meh, I finally found the motivation to take a graduate class, redid my resume, and looked for another job. Nine months later, I finally got out of jail and landed a corporate job in human resources, continued to take graduate classes, and brought my workouts to a whole new level. My broken heart was slowly fusing back together, not because of another relationship with someone else, but I was focused on my own personal and professional development.

Traditional revenge is likely to backfire

Despite being the target of someone else’s bad behavior or painful decision, nothing good will come out of revenge. Everyone has a right to feel those ill feelings when relationships and contracts are broken. However, do we really want to try to jeopardize someone else’s reputation, career, mental health, relationships, and overall well-being? The person who attempts to cancel someone else is likely to look worse in the end.