| 
How to Get Revenge
Do you want to hurt someone because he or she hurt you? Do you need to get even? Are you seeking revenge?
How do you get back at someone who treats you poorly? Who ruins your success? Who treats you like an enemy?
You might think the best revenge is to destroy your enemies. Make them regret ever messing with you. Prove you are more powerful.
Fighting an enemy can take over your life and cost you enormous amounts of money and time. Trying to get even with the bad guys can ruin your life more thoroughly than their original attack.
For example, Peter and his wife Samantha worked hard for 25 years to make their restaurant the best in town. Their restaurant was so popular, it was worth over $2 million. So when Peter caught Samantha having an affair, he asked for a divorce and decided to get even. He made sure they fought over every tiny detail for three years. In the end, their lawyers all had new Mercedes and they had nothing.
Many lawsuits are based on revenge. For example, an employee feels offended by a bad joke and decides to sue the company. Partners accuse each other of breaking their agreement and so spend five years fighting in court. You feel cheated by a company and so spend thousands of hours trying to make them pay you back.
If you use violence for revenge, you regret your actions. You hurt innocent people. You destroy your life. You end in prison.
Is anyone trying to ruin your success? How would you like to defeat them, once and for all?
In 1991, L. Ron Hubbard wrote "The Way to Happiness," a booklet that gives you 21 principles to achieve happiness. The 21st principle, reprinted below, outlines the most effective way to get revenge.
============================================================
"Sometimes others seek to crush one down, to make nothing out of one's hopes and dreams, one's future and one, himself.
"By ridicule and many other means, another who is evil-intentioned toward one can try to bring about one's decline.
"For whatever reason, efforts to improve oneself, to become happier in life, can become the subject of attacks.
"It is sometimes necessary to handle such directly. But there is a long range handling that seldom fails.
"What, exactly, are such people trying to do to one? They are trying to reduce one downward. They must conceive that one is dangerous to them in some way: that if one got up in the world, one could be a menace* to them. So, in various ways, such seek to depress one's talents and capabilities.
"Some madmen even have a general plan that goes like this: "if A becomes more successful, A could be a menace to me; therefore I must do all I can to make A less successful." It never seems to occur to such that their actions might make an enemy out of A even though he was no enemy before. It can be classed as an almost certain way for such madmen to get into trouble. Some do it just from prejudice or because they "don't like someone."
"But however it is attempted, the real object of such is to make their target grow less and fail in life.
"The real handling of such a situation and such people, the real way to defeat them is to flourish and prosper.
"Oh, yes, it is true that such people, seeing one improve his lot**, can become frantic and attack all the harder. The thing to do is handle them if one must but don't give up flourishing and prospering for that is what such people want you to do.
If you flourish and prosper more and more, such people go into apathy*** about it; they can give it up completely.
"And that is my wish for you: flourish and prosper!" -- L. Ron Hubbard
(*menace: a threat or danger) (**lot: one's destiny or condition in life) (***apathy: complete failure, no feeling, no emotion)
Learn more about "The Way to Happiness" at www.twth.org. You can also buy a copy of the booklet at
www.tipsforsuccess.org/way-to-happiness.htm.
Copyright © 2007 TipsForSuccess.org. All rights reserved. Grateful acknowledgment is made to L. Ron Hubbard Library for permission to reproduce selections from the copyrighted works of L. Ron Hubbard. For permission to copy, print or post this article, go to www.tipsforsuccess.org/reprint_info.htm or click here. To subscribe, buy books, contact us or learn more about TipsForSuccess.org, click here. |
