We all heard a phrase Do Not Judge Others or the one from the bible “Do not judge, or you will be judged”. It’s a common sense, if you do not want to be judged by others, do not do any judging to others and automatically others will not judge us. Is that simple, right?
That would be the ideal world, but unfortunately, that is not the case. People have their own will, and they will do as they see and feel fit according to their own understanding at any given moment.
When you choose not to judge others, others could still judge you. That phrase or philosophy is actually meant for our own well-being. We should not care if people are judging us. The most important thing is that we strive to do the right thing at any given moment. We choose to understand others, no judging. When we choose not to judge others, and if we do this long enough, we will form a compassion towards a situation, an empathy towards others and a good feeling to be able to live in the present. We will become more self-aware and become one with our surrounding.
This situation could be during conversation with your friends, families, even strangers that we just met or when we are alone to do contemplation or meditation. There are a lot of reasons why we should not judge others and I find that the following three are the most eye-opening ones.
1. It’s back-fire under the radar
Human action is formed by habits that we do every day in our life. When we judge others and continue doing it, over time it becomes a habit, an addiction, the bad one that we most of the time are not aware before it becomes too late. When it’s already a habit, depending on how long it’s been going on in our life, it’d be tough and tougher to get out from it. The worst thing about this is that we begin to view the world using the wrong lens, therefor skewed perspective. We begin to look down in others, put too high value on ourselves, ego kicks in uncontrollably and empathy which is the most important ingredient to develop Emotional Intelligence goes out the window.
We become judgmental person which deteriorate us in the long term, which is terrible for our evolution. We want to evolve to be a much better human being in all aspects of life and it’s just very difficult with the judgmental mode turned on. When we judge others, we are actually projecting what we do not like within ourselves, whether that be a feeling of jealous, hatred, anger, anxious, etc. It’s like a way to feel good in the wrong way. It might feel good at that moment, but unconsciously without we even realize it, it is very harmful to us.
So we would be actually busy projecting what we do not like within ourselves in others rather than working out a solution to improve ourselves. As a result, we do not do significant improvement over time which again… is terrible for our evolution.
2. No chance to adjust our own behavior
Contemplation is very important for our life journey. It allows us to assess any phases in our life journey, reflect upon them and make necessary adjustment that put us in optimum position to be better human being. But when we are busy judging others, we put a restraint order to our brain to focus on exactly that. We cannot effectively adjust our own behavior if we are still judging others. That is because we do not consider our behavior is wrong and it is actually felt good at that moment, it’s a moral boost done incorrectly.
We need to contemplate in order to be a better person in this life journey. But how to effectively do that when our mind is still filled with those mixed feeling of jealous, hatred, anger, etc. that is amplified exponentially when we judge others? Why this why that, how could this happen, why this always happens to me. Yeah… that could be the conversation that happens in our heads and yeah… we might use the always, why me kind of words.
It’s not easy to switch from being judgmental after long period of time to being considerate human being. It’s just like any other addiction, it’s so hard to give up a habit of smoking. It’s not just mental obstacles but also emotional as well.
The good news is that we all can choose a new path and with persistent, overtime, it allows us to be more considerate and grow our empathy towards others. Once that happens, we can contemplate with much better outcome. When we are on the path of compassion and understanding, we see the world as is and that allows us to make plans to navigate through it and trust that there is always a way to achieve that, there is a way to become more, there is abundance in this world that goes around for everyone. That mindset dissipates those mixed emotions like jealous, hatred, anger, etc.
It’s imperative that we do not judge others. It’s not for them, but it’s mainly for us. If we do that, we free up a lot of resources and our brain power to figure out the next step to become a better human being, which at the end would make us happier and have a fulfilling life.
3. Highly addicted and gets us nowhere in life
The more we judge others, the more lost we are and it’s just not getting us anywhere. You see other people that has what you want to have, instead of judging them, ask good quality questions such as “how to get there? what do I need to do to get there?” Supposedly you know that person cheated his way to achieve what he has now, what do you think you are going to get by keep judging him?
Let’s gather the fact. We could be after what he has which is a feeling of jealous. There are many ways to achieve that, and we just need to find the way that is aligned with our moral compass to achieve that. We could be angry because of what he had done that is against our value. That is actually not within our control and there is nothing we could do, so we just let it go and focus on something else that is important to our life.
Important question that all of us should answer and contemplate is that “When we judge others, what do we actually get in return? Do we get anything good out of it? Do we somehow magically get out of our problem that we are currently facing?” The answer is always no, so the fact is that judging others are very useless, do not get us near our goal and get us in the highly addicted habit that actually kills our productivity. It’s not getting us anywhere in life.
It’s important that we always seek and focus on solutions. Life as we know it, offers us an opportunity to be a better human being over time. It gives us chance to grow and be stronger through the problem that appears in our day-to-day activities. We can choose to be weak by focusing all of our resources to judge others, or we can rise up and be stronger by focusing all of our resources to figure out the best optimum solutions to our next problem.