How good is being judgmental?
Being judgmental is a phrase to describe the situation when we jump to a conclusion, based on limited information. The phrase and the definition might give us the impression that it’s a small thing, but when you go deeper into this, you find how much this habit interferes with our day-to-day life.
Let’s consider few examples.
- A small-town boy goes to a college in a big city and after a couple of interactions with the boys there, he stops mingling with them, based on his judgment that big city boys are loud, rude and clever and he doesn’t fit with them.
- During an office event, an employee avoids picking up furniture and you think he is being clever by choosing easy tasks.
- A new employee in the office keeps talking about his small achievements from the day and you judge that he is super boastful.
Now in all these situations, you’re making a judgment based on limited information. However, if you had gone deeper, you might have found a different reality like the city boys are helpful friends, the co-worker has back ache and the new employee is not trying to boast rather trying to motivate himself by remembering his little achievements.
Judgmental behaviour has many harmful effects as discussed below:
Effect on our relationships: Anthony DeMello, in his book, The Way to Love,2 points out that as soon as you have labelled anyone—either positively or negatively—you have lost awareness. You can no longer see who they are. A comment, appearance, or opinion triggers a reaction in you, and your response has little to do with who the person truly is.
When we judge people around us, either positively or negatively, we lose the opportunity to know the full details of who the person is, what they are saying, and how to see a given situation from their perspective that leads to unhappy relationships.
Effect on mental health: Being judgemental (mainly negatively) about others all the time affects our mental health. It becomes difficult to feel gratitude any time, which is very much required for our well-being. When you perceive the world from this perspective, your body is constantly on high alert that is in a state of “threat physiology” or “flight or fight.” Your stress harmones (adrenalin, cortisol, histamine) become elevated, you consume your body’s fuel supply to survive, and inflammatory markers become elevated. You feel agitated, your body is under attack, and eventually, people become seriously ill.
Ending the possibilities of learning new things –This is called pigeon-hole thinking, that you don’t try to learn new things, you just gather limited information and come to a conclusion based on that, locking away any new learning.
Hence, there are many serious harms of being judgemental and we must find solutions to resolve it. I have discussed 3 highly effective solutions below that can help anyone from being unnecessary judgmental.
Remove insecurities within your own self: The judgmental behaviour origins from our insecurities. This might seem counterintuitive but it’s true. When a small-town boy rejects city friends, he is insecure that he is not that exposed as the city boys are and decides to avoid them to protect his insecurity. When we see any unfamiliar situation, we try protecting ourselves by making a judgment. So, the solution is to resolve our insecurities to get rid of the habit of being judgmental.
Fill the gap between observation and conclusion: Not taking the time to find complete details is the primary reason for our judgmental behaviour. So, it’s highly important to be patient and put in effort to find complete details about the person or the situation before jumping to the conclusion.
Awareness of your own habit: To keep judgment from robbing you of joy, you must become aware. DeMello’s solution is to become aware of your judgmental nature’s effect on your quality of life and relationships. Awareness not only dissolves judgment, but it is also the most effective solution to resolve it in the long term. Becoming aware is the one contribution each of us must offer to the human experience, becoming aware of your thoughts and then move it to the next level–becoming more aware of the perspectives of others.
To conclude, if you think you suffer from being judgmental, try the above discussed solutions. Eckhart Tolle mentions in his book Stillness Speaks that sometimes we do not know what is going on in someone’s life. If we knew what he has been through, then we might have been worse than what he is. So, let’s not label others as right or wrong OR good or bad. Let’s be open to situations and new learnings to avoid mental disturbance and pursue peace. Let’s give others at least a benefit of doubt and take a step forward to know them more, as said by Jiddu Krishnamurti, “The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”
