Tag: unintended consequences

Unintentionally Hurt Someone

Sometimes things are said, decisions are made, actions are initiated that help you to create the sacred space you need to progress forward on your life’s mission. Life goes on, and periodically, we unintentionally hurt someone by our decisions or actions, and this is no fault of yours.

You’ve been true to yourself and said or done the things which were necessary for your survival or growth, and you never have to apologize for doing what is right for you in any moment because your responsibility is to care for yourself. If you do not look after yourself, who will?

And if you think about it, you’ve probably been hurt by someone else unintentionally.

When you become aware of how your decisions, words, or deeds have affected someone negatively your inner self can start to put you down or make you feel guilty. Guilt does not serve you, but if you can switch the mode from guilt (which is destructive) to remorse all you must do is to learn from this experience, forgive yourself, and move on.

To do so, realize that you are not broken, are not in need of fixing, and accept that sometimes shit happens. Don’t listen to or accept abuse from your inner voice, you are perfect in every way, even if you do make mistakes, or if someone is hurt unintentionally by anything you said or did.

You didn’t do anything wrong and you are not a bad person. There was no malice in your action because you are a being of love and wouldn’t do anything intentionally to hurt anyone. Even if someone else sees something that you’ve said, thought, or done as “bad” you are not bad, and that was clearly not your intention. Things happen, and it is what it is. That is all.

Seek to speak to someone empathetic to your plight. Their understanding and support can help to reduce the negative energetic impact of this particularly confusing state of mind. You might attract someone who can lend you a different perspective on the issue enabling you to see the situation from a different point of view. All valuable data to take away from this episode adding to your knowledge base and increased awareness. Something to keep in mind if you face a similar situation in the future.

Sometimes your personal network will give you the support you desire, and it never hurts to engage the efforts of a third-party counselor, consultant, or coach for a sound aerial perspective and objective view.

If your inner critical voice is running amok, you might want to have a talk with yourself and consider more confident self-talk.

Remaining open-minded rather than closed-minded will allow you to look for clues to uncover the hidden treasure(s) in this seemingly unfortunate episode of your life, for within each conflict there is a valuable lesson to be learned if you are open.

If your seeking within to find rhyme or reason in an effort to make sense of all this comes up blank, think of you from your higher perspective watching the whole scenario from a higher vantage point. Then ask yourself for advice. What advice might you give yourself, or someone you cared deeply about, who might have found himself or herself in the very same situation?

If you still think you don’t know, how would you answer if you did know?

You must find the wherewithal to forgive yourself for unintentional casualties of your decisions. Unforgiveness and allowing yourself to suffer in guilt is self-abuse, destructive, and will cause your immune system to deteriorate rapidly.

Forgiving yourself allows you to go forward in love, more aware, achieving your highest and best, continuing on your path to a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

God bless you. You are forgiven.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Expanding on Newton’s Third Law of Motion, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” Robert K.Merton, suggests that in sociological situations there exists the Law of Unintended Consequences. The Law of Unintended Consequences proposes that even with the best of intentions, things can happen which were totally unexpected.

The resulting consequences may take any of three basic forms, which are: Good, or Bad (or potentially really bad). Bad unintended consequences seem to dominate the idea, which is akin to Murphy’s Law.

It is good to be mindful about the potential ripple effect either anticipated or not, but don’t let worrying about the details get you lost in the paralysis of analysis. Here are a few examples of the law of unintended consequences in action, both good and bad.

Good Unintended Consequences

If you’re going to have unintended consequences, good ones are the preference, if you could choose. This is when your intentions are to have a particular good outcome from your effort or action, yet you are able to experience wildly greater unexpected goodness from your taking action than you could have ever expected.

Stories of good unintended consequence include buying a $5 painting to cheer up your sick friend with no expectation that the painting would be a $5 Million-dollar piece of art. Or with the best intentions, you develop a wallpaper cleaning product which is never embraced and as your company is about to topple, you find out that what you’ve really invented was one of the most famous kids’ playtime product, “Play Doh.”

Maybe you and your girlfriend decide to open a little shop to cater to your vegetarian friends in your hometown making it convenient to find healthy food, only to unexpectedly grow into “Whole Foods,” igniting a healthy food movement.

Bad Unintended Consequences

Bad unintended consequences refers to some ancillary unfortunate implications that result from your well-intended action.

In America, we wash our eggs to clean any possible infection off of them. This also scrubs a protective layer off of them, which makes it easier for eggs to get infected.

In the kitchen introduction of the microwave all but eliminated familial dining together as each family member now is more likely to fend for themselves using the microwave,

Making texting illegal while driving to cut down on accidents resulted in increased accidents because persistent texters who were previously texting in plain view were hiding their phones while texting a much more dangerous approach to texting while driving.

The Regans are famous for promoting drugs and music with illicit lyrics with their “Just Say No to Drugs,” and censorship of nasty music by making easier to identify the music by requiring “Parental Advisory” labels to the music media.
Side airbags were designed to save more live but ended up endangering the lives of children, who were fatally injured by the deploying airbags.

The “three strikes” law which imprisons third-time felony offenders with 25-year-to-life in prison, resulted in more law enforcement deaths resulting from offenders attempting to avoid the higher penalty.

The US government’s funding and CIA involvement in backing the Afghan Mujahideen in an effort to slow Soviet expansion led to the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.