How useful is your judge?

When it’s time to let go.

It seems that a lot of distress and suffering comes from paying attention to that judging inner voice. Most experiences aren’t as painful as the amount of judgemental thinking that happens as a reaction to them. Broadly there looks to be three types of judgemental thinking — judging yourself, judging others or judging circumstances — which one is louder for you?

Judging yourself

• You mostly hear how you’re not good enough
• You feel shame and are fearful about who you are
• You make a mistake or fail at something and you equate it to being a terrible person

Judging others

• You think you are 100% right and someone else is 100% wrong
• You don’t see any responsibility for your judging thoughts, its the other person’s fault you feel this way
• You easily feel envy, anger or jealousy but they morph onto outside things and people

Judging circumstances

• You aren’t really happy with your current circumstances
• You will only be happy when…. you get that promotion, have that money in the bank, find that perfect person.
• You think you could be doing or have something better

Maybe without that judge ruining our time and not actively listening to it, we might have a much more pleasant and joyful experience of life.

Even though you are the thinker, you are not your thoughts.

That judge might be a part of you, but it is not all of you. Noticing and naming its presence, getting curious, reframing and empathising with yourself or others can help to shift your thinking and weaken its power.

What could be different if you quietened that judging voice? How could anything or everything change for you, your relationships and your present experience?

This post is part of a series of atomic essays on Twitter for #Ship30for30