To judge or not to judge

Is being judgmental bad?

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

I’ve been very judgmental recently.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about it. Thinking about my judgments and my opinions toward others. Is it ok? or not ok? How to decide that?

Practicing “awareness building” is proving helpful to answer this. Awareness of my body, awareness of my emotions and feelings and awareness of my mind and the thoughts that travel through it.

So here’s what I noticed about what’s going on within. I have formed strong opinions about some very important topics, including education, health, parenting, success, happiness and many more. And I was getting a bit “bitter” about people who had different opinions than mine, particularly those who had opposite opinions than mine. It took me a while to further notice that I started feeling certain tightness in my body. A little more awareness practicing and I realized that my judgmental thinking and the subsequent bitter feelings were not helping me at all.

My heart is usually open to experiences and people (remember the title of this newsletter starts with Love) and I really enjoy that. There’s less drama, less conflict, and less unnecessary thinking within me and I’m peaceful and happy. Being in the judgmental phase made me very uncomfortable and I didn’t like that at all. I had to pause and figure out what was going on and what can I do about it - hence, I came back to writing :)

I guess our brains like to keep a stock of the “right” or “wrong” things. Whatever is in alignment with our beliefs and opinions is right and whatever is different from our beliefs and opinions is wrong. Perhaps here’s the catch!

(P.S. I really like what I just wrote! Light bulb moment of the day!) And I’ve read this statement 5 times already now. Here’s one more time for you -

How liberating is this thought!

I’ve been trying my best to release my judgments about others to regain my mental peace. And all along I was stuck on the fact that being judgmental is bad and I should not be judging other people. I was beating myself up for being judgmental and guess I was making it worse.

But now I feel that judgments are ok. Being judgmental is ok. Maybe it just happens automatically. What we think and do after judging something or someone is what matters. We have two options -

1. I judge your opinion as different from mine. And I think you are wrong. A series of other thoughts follow this and you very well know what those can be!

2. I judge your opinion as different from mine. And I recognize that it is just different. Period.

Back to PEACE!

Diversity is good. Having different opinions, different perspectives, different points of views are good and they make the world interesting. What if everyone thinks in the exact same way!! Life will be so boring and it can be dangerous too!

The Invitation

Here’s what I would love to invite you to experiment on - bring to your mind one person you were judging recently (try to pick an easy target to start with!). Read my light bulb statement a few times - Whatever is different from my beliefs and opinions is simply “different”. It is not wrong.

Take a few deep breaths and let me know if this changes anything for you.

Have a miraculous day!

With love, joy & gratitude,

Namrita