Negative Effects of ‘Teaching a Lesson’

Last week I was having lunch in a restaurant close to my office, and I overheard the conversation of four women who were seated at the table next to me. A woman at the table was complaining about an unknown individual; evidently this unfortunate person crossed some type of boundary or failed in some type of action. I don’t know what the situation was, but I heard the woman at the table say, “I’m going to give her a dose of her own medicine”, meaning of course, that she was going to mimic the undesirable behavior in order to, in her mind, either teach the other person a lesson or try to change the other person’s behavior.

 I cringed when I heard this, as I could picture the cycle of negative energy and intent that would be passed back and forth between those two. Nothing about that cycle would teach or heal anything. It would actually cause more harm than good.

Having negative intent or using negative action creates a negative energy vibration which doesn’t “teach” or heal anything. It’s merely an attempt to exert our will over someone else. It becomes a matter of force…it’s an attempt to forcibly change someone else’s behavior. Nothing positive comes from this and nothing is gained other than the continuation of a negative cycle.

This is even more true when withholding is part of the action. For example, saying to ourselves, “I’m not giving this or that to this person in order to teach them a lesson”. Whenever we consciously and deliberately withhold from someone in order to punish, whether it’s our time, our attention, money, support, or whatever it is…we’re creating an intent to harm, and this negative intent will only serve to hurt us energetically in the long run.

We cannot cause harm to another without causing harm to ourselves. It’s all a matter of shared energetic vibration.

What we can do when we’re unhappy with someone’s actions or behavior is to set healthy boundaries. And in doing so, the energy of the event changes. We can say “I honor the space where you are, and I empathize with you, but my boundary is xyz”. When this occurs, the energy shifts away from being negative and instead creates a positive energetic vibration. No more cross contamination of negative energy.

By setting boundaries, the other person may or may not learn from the experience, but that’s not our responsibility. We’re each responsible for ourselves, our own individual path, and what we create for ourselves from each experience. Let others be responsible for themselves.