Anti-Judgment Day

Can you go a whole day without judging something or someone?  Seriously, can you?  I thought I was a nonjudgmental person- I prided myself on that.  Until I tried to go a day without having any judgements and I fell flat on my face.  Literally.   I fell flat on my face and judged the curb I tripped on.  I lost my perfect streak within minutes of starting.  Epic fail.  Oh wait, that was a judgment too. 

It’s hard to go a day without having any judgments.  As humans, it’s what we do. It’s how we’ve literally survived the caveman days and evolved.  Holding someone to a nonjudgmental standard is like asking a fish not to touch water. 

Plus being judgmental can come in handy.  For those cavemen, it was in their best interest to fully judge the saber-toothed tiger who was about to eat them for dinner.  Sure you can be nonjudgmental, but you’ll also be dead. 

So are we all doomed to be “judgmental jerks” for the rest of our lives.  Absolutely not. When is life ever black or white and nothing in between?  Here in lies our power to choose.  The power to realize when it’s appropriate to be judgmental and when it’s more appropriate to get curious.  Curiosity can be a superpower if we remember to utilize it when it counts most.  Our ability to get curious in times when our primitive reflexes want us to react and judge, will set us free from unnecessary suffering.  The kind of suffering we put on ourselves because we’re closed off to ideas that are different from ours. 

The next time someone says something that makes you react- can you hold space and ask questions?  You don’t even have to directly ask that person.  Maybe it’s someone you see on tv.  You may never meet this person.  You feeling some type of way only affects you, not them.  You can do this quietly to yourself in those situations.  Can you ask yourself “I wonder what they must have gone through or experienced to say something like that?”  It won’t make what they said right and it certainly doesn’t mean you agree with them.  It just means that you hear something that isn’t in alignment with what you believe and you decide to put yourself in their shoes for a moment.  Judgment is a quick release that will make you feel really good in the short term, but it will only magnify the division that already exists amongst humans.  Getting curious will seem really awkward in the beginning but it will produce ease in the long term.  If more of us practiced this, may be we could see each other for our similarities rather than differences. 

Try it.  Get curious.  What do you have to lose?

Priya