Want A Better Relationship? Drop The Judgment.
Being judgemental pushes love away.
Most of us walk around the world making judgments all the time. Some of them are necessary, like judging whether or not your car will fit in that little window of space that opened up in the next lane over on the freeway. But that’s not the kind of judgment I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the kind of judgments that we use to make ourselves feel better by deciding that someone else’s choices are not as good as our own. We tend to fall into this kind of negative judgment when we want to feel superior — something that usually happens when we are lacking in self-esteem and self-love and are flailing around for anything to help us feel good about ourselves again.
Self-love and judgment.
Gauging how judgmental you are about the people around you is a pretty good yardstick for how you are doing with your own practice of self-love. The more you love and honor yourself and your own needs, the less you feel the need to judge others.
Often, a lack of self-love can most clearly be seen in how judgmental we are about those closest to us, especially our partners and significant others. Feeling judged by a romantic partner can feel particularly devastating because, not only do we value their opinion of us above the opinions of most other people in the world, we also tend to be most vulnerable with them. They are the ones who get to see us naked (literally and figuratively). And first thing in the morning. And last thing at the end of a very long night. If you spend enough time with them, they are the ones who eventually get to see all your weird little quirks and hidden habits. If the person who knows you more intimately than anyone else in the world holds this judgmental view of you, then it must be true, right? Wrong!
Judgmental opinions tend to have a lot more to do with the person doing the judging than the person being judged.
The good news is that you can fast track this process by applying self-awareness to your habit of thinking judgementally.
Here’s a journalling exercise that will help you develop the ability to look at your life through non-judgmental eyes.
Start by choosing something that happened to you today or in the past couple of days that brought up an emotional reaction in you. Something that bothered you. Something emotionally charged. It can be a small thing, like an exchange with a coworker or even something you observed happening around you that didn’t directly affect you, but got a reaction from you.
Now write it down. Describe what happened as simply and clearly as you can. Stick to the facts. Just write down the experience without adding a lot of opinion to it. If you’re not sure how to tell if you’re being judgmental, here are some signs that you’ve slipped in a judgement or two:
- You used the word “should” or “shouldn’t”. Telling yourself or others how they’re supposed to be or what they’re supposed to do is a way to pass judgment on who they already are.
- You’ve name-called or reduced someone to a label, even in a mild way. Calling someone something like “she’s such a soccer-mom” is a judgmental statement.
- You’ve been patronizing or condescending. For instance, something like “She probably can’t help it, she wasn’t raised right,” is judgmental.
- You’re guessing at what motivates someone else. For example, “she probably doesn’t like me” or “I bet she thinks she’s better than me.”
- You criticized yourself or others. All criticism is a form of judgment.
- You explained how you’d have done something different than another person did.
It’s okay to say things like, “I didn’t like it when…” or “It made me feel sad when…” That’s just observing your own reactions to the event.
Now read back over your description of this event and see if you can spot any judgment calls. If you can, that’s okay, just cross them out or delete them away. Then read it again.
How does it feel to look at that situation without the colored lens of judgement clouding your vision? Are you able to feel more empathy and compassion for the people involved? Can you see how their own judgment and lack of self-love might be influencing their actions and words?
Gratitude
Now try finding something in the situation that you feel grateful for. Maybe the situation involved a fender-bender or a near-miss in traffic. You can feel grateful for your fast reactions and working brakes that kept it from being a more serious accident.
Maybe the other person involved in the exchange is someone with whom you usually get along and value in some way, like a coworker who has helped you out in the past. Remember something they’ve done that you’re grateful for. Or you can even be grateful that the event is now in the past and that you can move forward from here.
If it is especially hard to find something in the situation to be grateful for, you can even just be grateful for the lesson you are learning from the event now.
Try again, bigger this time.
Next try doing this with something bigger, something that more directly affected you and made you feel even more upset. Is it harder to keep yourself out of judgment this time? That’s okay. But keep going. There’s a reason we practice things like non-judgment and self-awareness. The more you practice by looking back on recent situations, the more prepared and aware you will be when new situations arise in the future. Read through your description and look for judgement again. And again find something to be grateful for.
Try doing this each day at the end of the day for a week, and then see if you can start to catch yourself in judgment in the moment. When you can catch yourself doing it in the moment, you can start to shift gears.
That is the ultimate goal, to be able to see ourselves as we start to step into judgment and make the conscious decision to choose a better, more positive thought instead. There is always another thought that could replace the judgmental one. A kinder, more compassionate thought.
When you start to do this regularly, especially with loved ones, they will feel the difference. They may not say anything right away, but the difference between feeling judged and feeling seen and understood is huge.
Give the people you love most in the world the gift of your kindness and empathy, instead of your judgment. They will feel far more loved and better able to make you feel loved in return.
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