Confinement and social distancing have had a strange effect on me. While I still spend a lot of time thinking about food and creating recipes, I’ve been doing more introspecting and meditating than usual. I was just telling my husband that this “stay home” movement puts us in situations where feelings and thoughts that are usually suppressed come up and we have more mind space to take notice of them. One thing that’s come up for me is a sudden consciousness of how judgmental I am.
It is of course totally “normal” to judge – we all do it. We judge close friends and family, acquaintances, strangers and we of course judge ourselves. But the more I learn about the topic and how it affects us, the more I notice and want to minimize it in my life. And since more of my free time is spent reading and listening to books and podcasts these days, I’ve gathered a lot of thoughts about it and felt the need to share. Granted, it might not be the sugar-free unprocessed organic recipe you were hoping for on a Saturday morning – but I promise you, minimizing judgment in your life is good for your health.
It’s an energy “debit”
I first heard of the “energy bank” concept from the famous Carolyn Myss and here how it goes: think of your energy as money. We all have a certain amount of energy every day that we can choose to invest in our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, activities, interactions with others, etc. When you spend energy on things like love, creation, uplifting conversations with people, constructive meetings at work, learning something new, building relationships, helping others, taking steps to solve problems, etc you are spending it wisely because these things give you energy back. However, partaking in gossip, hanging out with the wrong people, experiencing jealousy, excessive worry, and being judgmental is a bad investment because it depletes you of your energy and gives you only negative energy back.
So judgment is clearly an energy sucker. Whether you are judging someone’s social media feed or a person’s behavior at a party, it never makes you feel good (and if it does, it doesn’t last, it’s the negative type of “feel good”, a bit like a gossip session). In fact, it usually generates feelings like fear, guilt, shame, anger, etc which are very low on the energetic frequency scale. According to David R. Hawkins, whose research looked at energy in scientific terms, where he basically associated numerical values to various levels of consciousness from which individuals operate, these are the emotions that have the lowest vibrations. See the chart below:
We do it all the time
Like anything, if you start paying attention to it, you will realize that we spend a lot of time judging.
Some examples:
“This person doesn’t know how to drive, they are so stupid.”
“She is such a goody-two-shoes.”
“I don’t trust him, can’t put my finger on it, I just don’t.”
“I look horrible in these jeans.”
“He is so ungrateful.”
“They don’t know how to raise their kids.”
“I’m such a bad mother.”
“Why is he being such a jerk?”
“She is showing off.”
“I will never be able to do this.”
“She is so rude.”
I mean, the list goes on and on and on…which means that it doesn’t just suck up energy but also time. And the more you judge, the more you will continue to judge, because with practice, the neural connections will strengthen.
What is behind a judgment and why you should care
Here is where it gets interesting. I don’t know if you remember, but a year or two ago, I interviewed a great lady called Isabel Galiardo, and we spoke about the concept of shadows – a term first coined by Carl Jung, which basically states that we all have parts of our personalities that we suppress because early on in our lives, we realized they were not accepted by our environment, parents, etc. Shadows often manifest themselves when a person has an above-average reaction to something. For example, someone might be completely closed to discovering new things because when they were small, they had a bad experience when they moved to a new town. Or someone might get very impatient with other drivers on the road because as children they had parents who were bad drivers and who got into accidents. There could be a million reasons, and it doesn’t matter. My point is judgment is like a shadow.
When you judge, scratch the surface and ask yourself where it stems from. For example, “that girl on social media is too perfect, she’s a fake.” Why? I mean maybe she is totally fake and you are a very genuine person, but there are genuine people out there who aren’t judging her – why are you doing it? What is this person triggering in you? There is a shadow lurking there. Shadows are generally not good for your quality of life – but that is another article altogether. Dr. Wayne Dyer put it really well when he wrote, “What you may not realize is that when you judge another person, you do not define them. You define yourself as someone who needs to judge others.”
The more you pay attention to your judgments, the more you will have the opportunity to uncover these shadows. If you want to that is – it is totally normal and ok not to choose the shadow route because it is a little scary and could force you to face things you are not – and may never be – ready to tackle. There are shadows I am definitely not interested in unraveling today. But even if all you do is pay attention to your judgmental thoughts, it is a huge step because you might stop and think “I’m judging this person right now, this is zapping my energy and reinforcing negativity in me. I don’t want to go there.” And the better you get at, the less you will judge, and the happier you will be because it will leave room for higher frequency thoughts, behaviors and feelings. And of course, if you judge less in your head, you will also judge less when speaking to others, your perspective will shift and the way your environment reacts to you will change for the better.
Suggested readings on this
I doubt anyone can totally banish judgmental thoughts and behaviors from their lives, but if you want to operate at higher frequency energetically speaking and lessen it, my advice is to first take notice of it. Having said, I am not the authority on this topic and on the journey myself, so please do read and hear what experts in the area say and choose a method that is right for you. Personally, I really appreciate the work of Gabrielle Bernstein – she has a great book called “Judgment Detox” – give it a try, she has a really pragmatic 6-step model on how to do this where she uses different tools, such as meditation, journaling, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT, aka “tapping”) to help you along the way as well as references to other great spiritual leaders. You might also want to take a look at Terry D. Cooper’s guide on this, the approach is different but is good food for thought.
