JUDGE WITH KINDNESS, FOR EVERYONE IS FIGHTING A BATTLE

 People will always judge you, even your loved ones

The Fame Game, Netflix 

Judging others is something of the basic of human behaviour.  We were taught since childhood to never judge others, instilling the saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’.  In most cases, it’s the feeling of insecurity that makes us judge others. Judging others can sometimes linked to the instinctual drive to evaluate threats.

People are judged based on their character or inherent traits rather than the situation itself.  This will almost always leads to unfair judgments.

People also tend to judge what they don’t understand.  Judgment can also stem from a person’s background, cultural environment, and past experiences.  These type of judgments are often bias and dangerous because they happen automatically and can influence our actions and attitudes, reinforcing stereotypes and discrimination.

So, it’s important to understand why we judge others:

- it provides a path towards more empathetic and less anxious living 

- it’s about refining the judgment processes to be more mindful and informed 

- able to enhance interactions and emotional landscape 

Some people can be quite judgmental and therefore it’s crucial to distinguish between making value judgments and being judgmental.  Value judgments reflect our discernment based on our values and priorities.  Being judgmental is us thinking that our opinions and values are ‘right’ and judging others as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’.  That’s us being arrogantly thinking that we’re better than others.

To break the judgments habits, we need to:

1. take a moment to understand the person’s background 

2. recognise your own insecurities 

3. work on building yourself up instead of tearing others down 

4. learn to create more self awareness 

5. examine your friendships and associations 

6. Focus on building connections based on positivity and mutual respect 

7. create and be the best version of yourself 

Judging is an easy process that doesn’t require much thinking or reasoning, whereas understanding is harder as it requires deep thinking, patience, compassion, and an open mind.  

Judging others is actually a natural cognitive process, influenced by social norms, personal experiences and psychological biases.  Judging others does not define who the others are, but it defines who we are.  It’s just like the story of a woman who judged the washings of her neighbour as not that clean when actually she’s looking through her dirty windows and therefore sees the neighbour’s washings as not clean.

So we can see that judging shut us down and prevent us from understanding the full situation or the new truth that is not known yet.  There are a few recommended steps to escape this judging loop:

1. Be judging, seek to understand with an open mind 

2. Know that there may be something about the situation that is not fully understood 

3. Be empathetic and give the benefit of the doubt 

4. Try to understand the situation or circumstances 

5. Practice self awareness 

6. Understand ourselves 

7. Learn to be more self aware when judging 

8. Move on to adopt more interesting thought patterns 

9. Be more appreciative and compassionate of the world 

10. Avoid fitting the world into our optics

11. Be kind, for everyone is fighting a battle.

Reference 

catharicspacecounselling.com

mike-robins.com

arcadiancounseling.com

times of India.indiatimes.com