Are You Judging Someone?
This is the question I am asked most frequently: “am I judging someone if….”?
The vision I have for a judgment-free world began when a long-time friend I trusted judged me. I felt such a painful sense of betrayal.
It taught me how to speak my mind without making someone wrong that I shared here on Tiny Buddha.
At the time, I went through a range of intense emotions that began with confusion that quickly turned to anger.
As I sat with the attacks I felt thrown at me, the anger turned to hate. A feeling I’d never felt towards anyone in my life! I wanted NOTHING to do with her ever.
It was a feeling I honestly had never experienced before. What I didn’t realize was that this divisiveness was coming from my own judgment!
Don’t we all need to judge?
When your experiences lead you to believe, conclude, have an opinion, or make an assumption or an assessment about someone ..let’s say greedy, selfish, unkind, disrespectful – isn’t this judging someone?
Some argue a resounding yes!
But – is it?
We all have our own experience, perspective, viewpoint or opinion. We’re free and need to have our own thoughts about someone – positive and negative.
There’s value in developing the skill of determining among other things who you want to surround yourself with, or who you may be better off avoiding all together!
Your ability to judge or what I prefer to say – discern someone’s character is a worthwhile endeavour : )
So what do I mean by judging someone? Why would you even want to live judgment-free?
Let’s talk about ‘good’ judgment, and ‘bad’ judgment – yes I’m ‘judging’ the word judgment to make a point!
‘Good’ meaning judgment that is helpful or valuable for wise decisions including your personal assessment of someone. ‘Bad’ meaning judging someone where you hold intentional thoughts that are destructive because you put someone down (see as inferior) leading to divisiveness, hatred or blame.
When you judge someone as bad or negative with a thought like “my in-laws are selfish, or disrespectful for not spending enough time taking care of their aging parents”, what do you notice about the energy you are holding against your in-laws?
Doesn’t feel good, right? Why? Because it’s not how you would care for your aging parents. This negative thought is true for you, and stepping on a value you honour, which you feel is wrong in your view.
Your definition of right implies a certain way of giving (your value) that’s not being met so it bothers you.
But there may be another energy here that’s self-destructive.
What’s also may be angering you is how someone else is choosing. Their ‘bad choices’ creates condemnation or contempt in you towards them.
This is the insidious energy of judgment that is blinding.
The Confusion around Judgment
It’s often believed that judging someone means “thinking, saying or feeling anything negative about anyone”.
You’ll hear this alot. If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it, but it’s more than what you say.
So I disagree. You will experience genuine emotions for what matters to you.
Your ‘negative emotions‘ (anger, frustration, distain or disgust) gives you the contrast to know what’s not in alignment for choices consistent with your values.
Being true to yourself helps establish your personal code of conduct for how you will treat, think, and feel about others, and yourself.
‘Good judgment’ becomes ‘bad judgment’ (meaning destructive or unhealthy) when we take those negative thoughts and emotions, and attack someone for how we feel something is right (silently or otherwise).
Judging someone is like a weapon you hurl towards someone’s heart. It creates separation breaking down any hope of effective communication, and it will move to destroy your relationships including the one with yourself.
Judging someone where you choose to condemn (threaten), or control (demand) by imposing your thinking into a should for someone else becomes a problem for all of us.
This is where anger and disgust about something is now being directed into hate, disdain, and contempt against someone.
It’s how we become divisive, and someone becomes “the other” or “enemy” that justifies our blame, hate, frustration – toxic energy you will be holding.
Now you are’judging someone in a way that’s harmful not just against someone, but also against yourself. You become self-righteous.
Judging someone will bring on resentment, bitterness, and you will not be able to find forgiveness here.
You will now behave with punishment, defensiveness, yelling at someone and treating others in ways you wouldn’t want to be treated.
Underneath, there’s a Condemning or Controlling energy you may be holding you can recognize with your ‘shoulds‘: “My in-laws should be more giving, otherwise they are bad, inconsiderate, selfish people.
These thoughts will creep in:
“How could they be so unsupportive of their own parents?”
“What’s wrong with them?”
Do you notice the problem when we think this way? We make someone wrong with our energy based on our right way.
We demand that what’s right for us must be right for someone else. It’s a blind spot.
You no longer maintain responsibility for your negative thoughts, and emotions – you take it a step further, and impose them in a destructive way onto someone who should be “some way” according to you.
If they do not follow your “right way” – they become inferior in your mind.
The stronger your judgment, the less human someone becomes to you.
Who are you to judge by putting yourself in a superior position?
In your mind, it’s now someone else’s fault for not following your ideals. None of us can ever live in someone else’s entire experience of being to really know what’s going on inside, and their choices are their responsibility, not ours.
Notice this also works for judging someone positively where we can impose generosity, kindness, respect upon people putting them high on a pedestal above us.
We can make someone superior to us, and may see ourselves as inferior or less than the other.
It’s where we make destructive comparisons, and self-judge, which is the root of feeling not good enough.
What Happens When You Judge Someone?
Jealousy, and gossip can easily show up. You can set up expectations no one can meet, and then get disappointed.
Pressure you create with your judgment appears for others needing to measure up to your standard. Someone is not as ‘kind’ based on your definition of how you think they should be…
Who are you to judge how someone else should be?
Your values for choices in behaviour are unique to you. Allowing for diversity and freedom of choice is not about tolerating, but understanding our differences with compassion.
Our action towards how you treat another person speak volumes about your character.
What being supportive means according to you simply tells you how you prefer to behave, but it can be very different to someone else.
Any behaviour by another parent you see as not respectful towards their child tells you how you want to treat your own child.
Our Greatest Challenge
What happens when you know someone is deliberately choosing to do something that is destructive, hurtful, unloving – how do you not judge them?
How do you stand up for what’s right, and good without condemning someone? This is where it gets a bit tricky to navigate.
The best way is to first move away from reactionary emotions and find your inner calm. Get connected to your values. You can both honour your values and own your anger, and speak from here or walk away knowing you cannot change other people.
You begin to take 100% responsibility for your thoughts, and allow others to take 100% responsibility for theirs even when you don’t like something or vehemently disagree.
It’s their choices for their path – their mistakes to make, their lessons to learn.
By letting go of needing to change other people to be the way you want, you suddenly liberate yourself, and begin to live judgment-free.
You become the change by letting go of judgment, which is in the way of you simply living your own values. When you can accept others are simply being who they are according to their “right way” – you will discern better who they are.
We all need to find our own healthy space with everyone in our lives. It can mean leaving relationships behind, even sometimes family members.
You will discover a place that goes beyond the opposites of right and wrong, and good and bad labels where you need to be right, and make someone else wrong.
Your true inner voice is calm, non-judgmental and knows the energy of what’s loving, compassionate, and understanding.
Speaking What’s True for You
Connecting within to the divine part of you can give you the strength to stand up for what you believe is right for you, and act on it. You can share, teach, role model and guide.
Sometimes someone is not able to handle your truth in a way that becomes destructive to their well being so you need to discern what’s the ‘highest good’.
How others respond to you speaking your truth reflects who they are – some may judge you, be confused by you, or even hate you. There may be conflict you face, and need to mange that will allow you to grow in leaps and bounds.
You will stop wearing the mask of complacency for what matters to you. It’s easy to maintain a false sense of harmony that isn’t aligned with your authentic self where are you not living what’s true for you.
Who isn’t tired of all the blaming, complaining, and surface drama of those who judge others?
It dawned on me one day…there’s no right/wrong or good/bad when it comes to love. It’s when love isn’t present that we need rules.
Loving energy is compassionate, kind, understanding. ‘Right’ or ‘Good’ is subjective.
Some believe they are kind by punishing, understanding when demanding an apology, compassionate when feeling pity for someone.
Notice what energy is fear driven. Calling something good doesn’t mean it is good.
Love feels positive, blissful, passionate, intimate on a level that is right because it will feel aligned. There is no blame, no guilt, no confusion within you.
The wonderful piece when you let go of judgment?
Love keeps expanding as you grow farther away from ‘right and wrong’.
Your willingness to be open and stay curious allows you to see beyond the limited perspective of right or wrong and recognize that no one IS good or bad isn’t easy.
It’s someone’s choices not the person that can be difficult to accept and where we may disagree, but we don’t have to judge them personally for what feels right to them on their soul path.
People’s intentions may be good, but the fear of not being good enough, not being loved, or accepted combined with dysfunctional social conditioning, a lack of experience or poor resources can affect anyone’s ability to make positive, healthy choices.
It is not an excuse for destructive (unloving) behaviour. It’s a profound awareness that allows you to see beyond your own resistance that comes with judgment.
“What you resist persists, what you befriend, you will transcend”.
~Robin Sharma
If you believe you are worthy, and deserving of love, that all of us are – even those who treat us in a way we don’t want to be treated – the kind of freedom to grow becomes limitless.
This is where you can experience love on levels you can only imagine – in the unfolding of who you are becoming. Some have not learned how to love in a healthy way.
When you begin to practice living judgment-free, the conditions of right and wrong slowly begin to fade, and you become more aligned with your highest self.
A true freedom to be you appears that finally gives you the experience of what it means to love, and be loved unconditionally.
When you start living true to yourself, you are often faced with judgment, but that’s not in your control, and besides, you now recognize it’s just an energy that can be surrendered.
Who are you judging, and will you practice letting go of its energy that controls or condemns others?
As we release the energy of being judgmental, we will find ourselves in the expanding love of a judgment-free world.
There’s a place “beyond right and wrong” that no longer has “me against you” in our homes that becomes “us against them” in our communities, and unfathomable conflict in the world.
