To get revenge on a toxic person, cut them out of your life and do not let your mind focus on them. As long as your thoughts, feelings, and actions are directed toward the toxic person, they will still belong to your life. To get revenge is to forget.

It probably sounds naive — but only because of societal conditioning. We have been conditioned to compete and fight against our enemies, and somehow we have forgotten the easiest and best solution.

Which is to focus our energy on what we want in life, and remove what we don’t want, not by fighting (or getting revenge), but by simply avoiding it.

Keep reading…

What makes a person/friend toxic?

In short, someone who is toxic makes you feel worse about yourself and your life (that is, directly because of their attitude and behavior).

Interestingly, not all toxic people are toxic deliberately and consciously. I am sure you have met people who drained your energy or made you miserable without actually being aware of it.

In either case, the end result is the same — negativity. That is, less energy, less enthusiasm, less power.

When you interact with someone who is truly toxic, you basically give away energy and consequently feel worse, mentally and/or physically.

Common traits of toxic friends or partners include lying, deception, manipulation, lack of empathy, and a sense of superiority.

Your decision to consciously protect yourself against a toxic person, or simply give them less attention, depends on how toxic they are.

Has this person made your life hell? Did they seriously interfere with your mental wellbeing? Has this person ever made you feel anxious or afraid? 

Since you are looking for ways to get revenge on them, I am going to assume that somehow they belong to this category (truly toxic people).

But no matter how much pain they have inflicted on you, revenge is never the solution. And if you are still skeptical, consider the following four points…

Why revenge itself is toxic

1. You are the people you spend time with

You’ve probably heard it already — you are the average of the five people you surround yourself with. And it’s true.

We are social creatures who subconsciously pick up from those around us. That’s anyone. They don’t need to be friends or people we like, just people in general.

Now, you may be thinking, revenge itself does not require any type of contact with the person who hurt you.

While this is theoretically correct, in order for you to get revenge on someone, your mind must still be absorbed by them; your energy must still be directed toward them.

So although it may look like the other person is now the most distant entity in the universe, psychologically and spiritually that is not the case.

Think of someone long enough and you become like them. In Nietzsche’s words, when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.

2. Your time is too precious for revenge

Successful people are fanatical about time and time management. This is because they realize time is life itself, and we simply cannot afford to waste time on things that are not meant for us.

The second reason you should never try to get revenge on someone, even if they have hurt you or have been toxic to your mental health, is that time is your most valuable asset.

And even if the act itself took only a split second, make no mistake — it’s not the act but the whole thought pattern that precedes and follows it.

How do you want to spend your time? What things do you want to create with it, how do you want to feel? Think of the word “revenge” and all it implies, and you automatically feel miserable.

Wouldn’t it be better to focus on your own happiness, and simply forget, or let go? I guarantee that is the best possible revenge, and we’ll get into that in a minute.

3. You become what you feed your mind

What your mind absorbs each day determines a big percentage of your happiness and quality of life, and I’ve written an entire article on the topic.

If the person you would like to get revenge on is still in your mind, if they still consume your thoughts in a negative way, then that’s what your mind feeds off.

By contrast, imagine a situation where that person no longer affects you in any way — not just physically, but mentally as well.

That gives you the power to consciously feed your mind with pretty much anything you want.

If you were to carefully select the thoughts, images, and goals/desires to focus on, I’m sure the thought of revenge wouldn’t be high on the list. It wouldn’t be on the list at all.

4. You cannot avoid it by fighting against it

Here’s the last point I want you to consider — revenge is never a responsibility; you never have to get revenge on anyone despite what you might have been told.

Some of us have been conditioned to think we have to fight for things, including our own wellbeing. And that we are supposed to fight against anything we dislike. This idea is reflected by movies, politics, games, etc. 

Now, I’m not going to argue that forgiving and letting go is always the solution. But I will say that it is the absolute best solution most of the time.

When we experience pain or abuse, or when we face a threat, our natural reaction is to simply avoid it. Guess what — most of the time, that’s also the most sensible reaction.

When there is no need to fight against someone, then fighting will only make things worse because it will force you to invest energy in the very thing you want to avoid.

Revenge is the perfect example of that. Do you actually need to get revenge on anyone? The objective answer will always be no, no matter what that person has done to you.


How to get revenge on a toxic person

  • Ignore them; forget them. Literally do not even consider them, and accept that they don’t belong to your life anymore. This could be an actual revenge in the sense that if the other person used to feed off your attention, now they won’t be able to, and that itself will be their punishment. But most importantly, it will give you peace of mind.
  • Fill your life with positivity. I get it — it’s not always easy to forget those who have been toxic to our mental health. And it takes time. So what you want to do is fill your life with positive habits/thoughts until they replace old ones. That’s going to help you say goodbye to painful memories and focus on the present moment.
  • Learn the lesson. If the person you’d like to get revenge on somehow took advantage of a vulnerability, or weakness, then that’s an opportunity to learn from that and become a stronger person. Though it’s totally normal to be vulnerable, we should never allow others to take advantage of that.
  • Be the best you can be. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Whatever happened, use it as fuel. Toxic people want to drain your energy and steal your enthusiasm; that’s almost always the goal, whether they do it consciously or unconsciously. Surprise them — have the opposite reaction: be the strongest and happiest you’ve ever been.

Remember: any thought, action, or feeling directed toward a toxic person implies that you give away energy.

Though your intention may be to fight against them, to hurt them, spiritually it doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that your energy is still directed toward the person who made your life hell, and that can only be detrimental to your happiness.

Even heard the phrase “there is no such thing as bad publicity”? You can think of yourself giving attention to toxic people as “publicity”.

Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want; what you want to attract, not the people you want to avoid. It really is that simple.