Judging - Good, Bad, Or Ugly?
How do you judge yourself and others?
I remember I had this huge judgement around keeping the house clean and tidy, just in case I had visitors. This fell apart when I got pregnant and subsequently had my baby boy. I used to cry that I couldn’t look after my son and clean the house at the same time. It started to get so bad it was affecting my life, my new found motherhood, until I realised I was judging myself on what others may perceive me to be.
In order to shift this I really had to look at where this cane from and what did it all mean. It came from my parents and once I knew that I realised I could shift it.
How many times do we stop ourselves from doing things?
How often are we not living our values and doing the things we love?
How often do we not go out or do something we love because we think we don’t know how to do it or will look silly or to thin or to fat to go out?
So much judgement in yourself and does it all matter and why do we do this?
What if you removed all of those negative judgements of yourself and others, what would life look like now?
We will always judge and that ok, however if we receive the negative judgment of ourselves then life can be easier.
It always comes back to understanding why we judge.
The short answer is to determine why someone would do something, we have an innate sense in us to understand why people do things and why we do things.
We are wired to understand others attributes because we need to make sense of why people do things they do. So we look at things like, why did he do that, and why did I do that, that’s the crux of it. So we judge others and ourselves all the time around these attributes and traits.
We judge for many different reasons, we often do it when we?
- Don’t know a person well
- We cannot identify with a person’s belief system, values or behavior
- That person somehow threatens how we perceive ourselves and
- The person triggers a past story’s in us.
There are so many other additional things like, insufficient sleep, stress, illness or injury can make us more susceptible to making knee-jerk reactionary judgments.
Past stories and how our adults spoke around us as children, then influences our judgment habits as adults.
It’s not all that bad this judgement thing!
This little judging ego we have can actually keep us alive, if we were in the jungle being pursued by a dinosaur, it would judge the situation putting us in flight or fight mode and we would be out of there in a flash.
So obviously times have changed and today there might not be a dinosaur, but there are other situations we can use the judgement for. Like situations and or people to keep ourselves safe and make sure we are not in a threatening situation.
The deep hard cold horrible facts are, when you judge someone else, you are judging yourself too. Its like looking in a mirror. This is called the “mirror world theory” So at its core, the this theory is as simply as this;
You can only see in others what you have inside yourself.
Wow that’s pretty profound stuff. So really what we are saying is, the way you think you feel about things, people, and events around you is only a reflection of the way you feel about yourself.
When you are judging someone as being boring, selfish, mean, beautiful, wealthy etc…. you’re actually judging yourself as the very same thing. Which means you actually haven’t owned your own person trait or attribute yet.
The mirror world theory says in a nut shell is all humans have every trait. We all have kindness, greed, jealousy, and rudeness. People simply express these traits in different ways, different parts of there life and at different times.
So how can we stop this circle of judging.
Well to put it simply, there are times that we will need to judge, for survival and there will be times we judge so we can self reflect. Its within this self reflection we can have growth, without being guilty of our judgment.
If you judged in a way that seems mean, then don’t feel guilty, reflect on this judgement and learn from it. Self forgiveness here is the key and it helps us to see the area’s in ourselves we may need to heal.
Another way to help with the judgment is to inspire yourself with others inspirational traits. Which ones do you really love and remember if that trait is one you really love then you have it too. We all have them its just the different times, they may show up.
So if you really struggle with judgment and you want to feel different, follow these tips;
- Firstly self reflect, see what you can learn from the situation
- Secondly if you where triggered by anything, look at that trigger, write about it and reflect on how you can improve on the trait you hold inside of you. And always remember self reflection equals self growth.
- Thirdly look at those amazing attractive traits others have and know you have them too.
Much love and light to you all.