Labeling Another Is the Same as Rejecting Them
by Guillermo Vidal | May 3, 2021 | Becoming Your Best Self
What is your favorite brand to put on people? Epithets like redneck, communist, socialist, asshole, lowlife, uneducated, high-maintenance and loudmouthed are common ones. There are others that don’t seem so offensive but put boundaries around the targeted person’s character; blue collar, conservative, liberal, progressive or overly religious. When we label others, we unfairly restrict them to this description.
It seems like it is second nature for humans to use labels to describe others. This is what our ego uses to identify those who are for or against us. The problem with this approach is that we dismiss or accept another according to the descriptor we apply to them. These tags allow us to shirk our responsibility to get to know the targeted person. We apply our labels as a prism by which to judge their actions. For example, when we judge a person to be an asshole, we interpret his/her actions to be malicious even when they might be trying to be kind.
We put labels on ourselves
No one is harder on me than me. I often judge myself to be stupid, unattractive, unworthy of good things, unlovable and boring. Using self-descriptors to describe oneself is natural, but when we use them in the way I just described, they…
