How To Stop Being Judgmental Of People And Situations

Personally, I find this a really difficult habit to break, because it’s so easy to judge a person or situation when I’m unsure of what’s really happening, e.g. a friend doesn’t call when they say they will, someone you’re meeting doesn’t turn up and you’re unable to contact them, you make a negative assessment of someone (or a situation) based on third party information, and so on. How easy is it to slander like this? All too easy, I think, because it’s human nature. And we can let it escalate by casting our mind back over all the occasions when this same person or organisation disappointed us before. Yet, how do we really know what’s going on behind the scenes, or what that person is going through, etc? In most cases we can’t, so we make a guess, otherwise known as a judgment. And all too often these are negative and slanderous, yet they’re often dumbfounded.

INQUIRY: How do we go about transforming this? Is it a case of getting in the routine of recognising when you’re doing it, and stopping it before it continues, i.e. letting go of the judgment and getting on with things?

For the next seven days, make a determination not to judge people and situations. That doesn’t mean adopting a carefree attitude, instead it means either releasing the whole process altogether, or replacing it with compassion and understanding. Have a look at where the other party is coming from? What are they going through?