I’ve been thinking a lot about judgment lately…
The human ability to judge enables us to make clear decisions, allows for creative problem-solving, and even helps us avoid dangerous situations.
But when our inner judge is out of balance, we can become reactive and self-protective. The line between making judgements and being judgmental can become blurry.
There are certainly values and standards worth judging. But that is not the same as pointing out the faults in other people, in an effort to avoid our own. When we’re critical of others it broadcasts our fixations, our values (good or bad), our general lack of love…and our own insecurities within ourselves.
Judging others helps us feel superior; unfortunately, it can lead to a false sense of self-worth. When our judgements aren’t coming from a neutral mind, they can hurt others and ourselves.
The healthiest, most productive place we can live is in reality – in the truth.
The truth is I am better at some things than I am at others. The truth is I try really hard and I have good intentions. The truth is also that I’m not perfect and I will (not might) make mistakes, have off-days, and even sometimes say and do things badly for a myriad of reasons. And so will other really good, responsible, well-meaning people.
The truth vaporizes fear of failure and allows me to acknowledge where I fall short so I can simply start working on improvement without wasting time on mean internal dialogue…that I then have to work through, reframe, get past, etc. Whew! It’s exhausting and actually weird when we think about it.
Laying down self-judgement leads to less judgement of others and a more comfortable relationship with the truth which reduces fear of failure and allows us to take important risks, offer valuable ideas, and reach out to others in their time of need. None of us really believes we’re perfect, but we often act as if we did and we construct entire alternative realities around that. Again, it’s weird!
When we choose to be compassionate instead of judgmental it doesn’t mean that we’ve thrown our values out the window. It simply means that we’ve acknowledged our human weakness and we’ve decided to be kind and real in the moment…even to ourselves.