Today let’s discuss judgment. I’m speaking of judgment as a verb. This is tricky. I am not referring to our making decisions and choices that affect our well-being. We make decisions about what is helpful to our overall good. We make choices about our preferences of cars, movies or places to eat.
I’m speaking of our making negative judgments about people, things or situations that we disapprove of, creating an emotional feeling to which we apply labels of bad, dumb, wrong, or distasteful. Prejudicial judgments of this nature take us right out of our emotional balance, and every decision we make from such a place of imbalance is more likely to be flawed and of lesser quality. Most often this invites either defensiveness or attack right back at us.
As suggested above, the minute we judge ourselves (inadequacy, guilt, shame, and self-hatred) or judge others (disapproval, resentment, hatred, anger or jealousy) we have moved to an emotional place of weakness. Not only is this powerlessness of an emotional nature, it has been proven this weakens us physically as well.
Most of you reading this have heard it said before that when negative judgment is replaced by kindness, compassion, forgiveness, understanding and love, everyone benefits. In studies where forgiveness has taken place, the person forgiving benefits equally with the person forgiven, and even witnesses benefit as well.
The cruel joke about our judging is how compulsive it is. We are “judging machines”. We take sides and make judgments about others and situations hundreds if not thousands of time per day. From the moment we arise in the morning and look at the newspaper or listen to the news, our judgment mechanism is in overdrive. Seemingly, one of the things most harmful to us personally is the very thing we habitually do most automatically.
Well then, how do we go about changing this destructive (self-destructive) compulsion?
I once heard a wonderful descriptive phrase placing judgment in an appropriate context. “Just because I like chocolate doesn’t mean I have to hate vanilla.” Do we really need to make our decision about not liking vanilla into a prejudicial emotional response? Is it sufficient if we determine that something is distasteful, to acknowledge it is not helpful to us and move our attention to something more positive?
Freud, Yung, Hawkins and Friedman, legendary psychotherapists all claim that our judging others is simply a projection of dislike and degradation for ourselves. They say that since we resist walking around all day making self-deprecating remarks, we instead project our self-hatred onto others and go about disparaging them all day long.
If this is true, then going about our day making wonderful judgments about ourselves and others must be a terrifically positive and healthful activity.
I’ll make a suggestion based on a claim that may seem radical to many of you reading this, yet from my own experience people are just doing the very best they can, and don’t deserve to be judged! Never! By anyone! Don’t be misled for a single moment…I do plenty of judging of others. I make those mistakes because I’m a judging machine as well.
Since I am tired of causing grief both to myself and others that I love, I am determined to break this habit of judging others. I am convinced that nothing is gained by judging others. So what am I doing to “kick the habit”?
First, I am paying attention to when I am judging and as soon as I catch myself I immediately correct my judgmental thought. When I catch myself making a judgmental behavior, I immediately correct that behavior and make amends if possible. And I work hard to integrate being non-judgmental into my behavior.
Second, I am focusing on being loving and positive with everyone, especially when I’m triggered into unhelpful thoughts or behaviors. I am seeing wonderful differences, although I’m not yet great at this behavior.
I intend to be far more balanced and healthy and powerful in positive ways, and so I commit to being far less judgmental. If you have ideas about other methods to minimize judgmental behaviors, please share them.
Tom
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