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We all have opinions about things. This is not a deep thought; it is just the truth. Since we form our opinions based on our life experiences and beliefs, they can be unique. Our opinions come from our judgment, so we must all agree that we are judging creatures. We are always judging ourselves or others. Judging is human nature. But is this a bad thing?
Judging is a complicated and contradictory subject because it is hard to understand that we feel it as a human necessity, but we don’t want others to judge us. We all feel like it is ok when we do it because come on, we are humans, but when we feel someone else is judging us, we immediately react with how you dare? See the huge contradiction? It is ok for me but not for others, but they are humans too, so why is it not ok for them? The truth is that we are afraid of being judged.
Do you know why we don’t like to feel judged? Because most of the time judgment is linked to a negative emotion. We have the tendency to think that being judged would always have a negative connotation. Most of us think that judgment is a form of criticism. So, it is understandable that we don’t like it. We just don’t want to feel that we are doing wrong things, or we don’t look good to others. So, if we don’t like the feeling of being judged, why do we keep judging? Why can’t we stop judging ourselves and others? I told you this is a complicated subject. But bear with me because I might have an idea to accept this behavior in a different way.
I have always been known as a positive person. I feel I am a positive person. I choose to be positive no matter the situation. Obviously, I am not perfect. I work hard to keep my positive vibes high most of the time, but as I have mentioned before, life happens and sometimes fear would try to dominate me, and we all know that fear and faith can’t share the same space. We let fear in, and faith is out and vice versa. So, when I have let fear win, the positive vibes have gone away for a little. The good thing is that this is not the norm for me. For most of the time, I am a positive person.
Few days ago, a friend of mine told me the following sentence: “When something does not go your way, you become way too negative.” That hurt me bad. I felt judged in the rawest possible way. My first thought was, “If I always do my best to keep positive at all times, how does he dare to call me negative? And not only negative … way too negative! Goodness!” When something like this happens, my mind feels like my clothes were removed and I am a naked woman running in front of millions of people who don’t stop judging me. It is a hard feeling to process. I was not that mad, instead I was sad. I felt sad knowing my friend had that opinion of me. I was disappointed at me because I was thinking how hard I work to be a positive person and for some reason that was not what I was showing to the people around me. I was judging myself based on what he told me.
It took me a few hours to process the whole situation. I went over the conversation multiple times to have a better understanding of his point of view. I knew he did not say that with the intention to hurt me, but I did not understand his reasoning at first. All I knew was that I felt judged in a bad way. So, I let my phone down for a while and immersed myself in a nice yoga flow. While doing my yoga poses, my mind opened. How did that happen? Easy! I caught myself judging my own movements. I was letting my judging mind to dominate my flow. Why am I not flexible enough? Why can’t I breathe the perfect way, so I can do this in a better way? Why this, why that? Right at that moment, I started laughing at myself. The judging mind does not stop. It is always there in the background waiting to jump and do its work. I texted my friend after I finished my yoga life lesson. I told him I knew he did not say that to hurt me, and I explained to him the way I felt. He also explained his reasoning behind that, and that actually made me see few things in a different better way.
What happens when we feel judged is that we activate our own judging mind and that one does not have compassion. Our inner critic is not kind. Therefore, being judged has that huge negative connotation on us.But if we work on getting a stronger awareness, and we can catch our own judging mind in the act, we will see other’s opinions in a different way. Many times, people don’t say things to us with the intention to hurt or criticize; instead, they have a different perspective that might be helpful if we truly understand where they are coming from. And even in the case that someone is judging us with a bad intention, if we are strong enough to know that we are giving our best, their judgment would do nothing to us.
The life lesson here, my dear friends, is that judging is bad only when we let it be bad. If we do good and keep giving our best to all aspects of our lives, judgment would just become feedback. And feedback makes us grow. ☺
Love,
Irene
