How can I discontinue my judgements?
Let’s look at one example. Let’s say you think Mr. A is too pushy and insufficiently respectful. As a result, you find your relationship with A upsetting. What to do? First, pause and note what judgements you are making about him. In this case, you feel he is too pushy and not enough respectful. The first question then for you is, How can I stop seeing my upsetting person in a negative light?
Why discontinue such judgements? Because they are at the heart of your upsets. If you didn’t believe your Mr. A was too this and/or not enough that, you would not feel bothered when he showed up. Stick with your judgements and you are stuck with your upsets. Stick with your judgements and there will always be discomfort between you A; he will never be the person you want him to be.
How discontinue your judgements? Every time you experience him – or whomever it is that is upsetting to you — stop and remind yourself that he is just living his life, maybe even doing the best he can. If you find him, say, too pushy or insufficiently respectful, don’t take that too personally; see that is his problem; it need not be yours; he would probably do whatever he does with many other people as well as with you.
Indeed, it may be that he was born to be pushy and disrespectful; perhaps because he has something to learn about it or perhaps because people in this world need to learn how to deal with pushy, disrespectful people and someone has to play that role. It’s impossible to say exactly why any of us are born with the personality we have. Rather, better to accept Mr. A the way he is, just as you would like everyone to accept you the way you happen to be at the moment.
Apply this example to those who upset you. What judgements do you keep making? How can you discontinue seeing them that way?
So now… What shall we do?
Can I remind myself to keep going?
Chances are you will have to give yourself such a reminder many times; your upsets may well have become an unconscious and automatic habit. It’s hard to change old habits, even when we strongly want to do so. But persist. Each time you find your Mr. A upsetting, stop and remind yourself that you can’t change anyone but yourself and that it may well take time to change yourself.
So, ask yourself, What is it within this upset I am feeling that has to do with me? Is there anything in my own patterning and emotional construct that is generating the upset? And if so, what it is?
Be gentle with yourself. Persevere, give yourself time to change and, eventually, your Mr. A will come to upset you no more than a stuck door or any other obstacle you meet in life. You will have discontinued judging your Mr. A and you can expect to find him less and less upsetting to you. Can you find a way to persist? How? That’s an important learning by itself.
What can I do while I am working at dissolving my judgements?
Until the upset with your Mr. A dissolves, you will still need to live your life. Consider: Should you minimize contacts with Mr. A? Become more aware of his positive traits? Speak honestly with A about what upsets you? Ask a third person for advice?
Each situation will be different. But take charge of your life and give some thought to how you can do the best you can while Mr. A is still buzzing around.
What can I learn about handling disturbing feelings?
It’s of course wise to make the most of all our experiences, and especially upsetting ones. Can we learn something useful from upsets? Absolutely. There is likely a good reason the universe includes people who can disturb us. Two learnings are especially valuable.
First, we can use disturbing feelings to motivate us to practice not taking things so personally, so we’re not so bothered by what others do or don’t do. Feelings and thoughts about others, after all, are not our deliberate creations. They just come to us from time to time and then, after a while, as circumstances change, are replaced by other feelings and thoughts. Rather than suffering any of them, practice simply observing your thoughts and feelings coming and going, as if you were someone else watching your mind activity. That is, observe your upsetting feelings and thoughts with detachment. See yourself from the outside.
Practice that and then see, if as it does for so many others, help you become much more aware of the part of yourself that is deeper and more peaceful than your judgmental mind. See if it puts you more in touch with your pure, good, strong essential self. And then see if you feel more balanced and life becomes easier. It often works that way.
Can I learn something new about myself?
Our upsets can teach us something about ourselves of which we were not fully aware. Fact is, if you find someone to be too pushy it may well be that you yourself have somehow become too pushy for your ideal self. That’s the way it works. It’s called projection. When something inside us is active, we are sensitive to it whenever it shows up outside ourselves. Buy a red car and we can expect to see many more red cars in town.
You might then consider the possibility that your Mr. A is there for you, not against you, that you needed him or her to make you more aware of something inside yourself. You might then welcome such persons into your life, even start treating them like yourself for, more than you had realized, they are like yourself.
In short, you can learn something about yourself from considering the things that bother you about others. Try it.
How can I discontinue my judgements of myself?
If you have slipped into a pattern of pushiness, or any uncomfortable habit, consider that, deep down, it probably doesn’t feel right to you. It probably does not represent the person you really want to be. That is, one part of you is judging another part of you. When that happens, we cannot completely relax with ourselves. There will always be something between the way we see ourselves and the self we really want to be.
Suggestion: Make a list of all the uncomfortable self-judgements you can find: I am too pushy, too short, too lazy, not ambitious enough, too indecisive, uncreative, impatient or uneducated or too homely, too self-critical or lonely. Whatever. Then, very often, look at back on that list and ask yourself if you can be certain that you should not be as you happen to be.
How can you know the Universe did not intend you to be that way? Perhaps you needed to learn something about yourself. Perhaps your role is to help other people learn something about themselves. Or, more likely, your mind cannot understand why you are as you are. Who knows? Your current makeup may have something to do with past lives which you will never fully understand.
In any case, as it’s better to accept others, it’s better to accept ourselves. Why? Simple. Ask yourself: Can your personal contentment last for too long when some non-self-acceptance keeps nagging at you?
Byron Katie offers a very good way to realize how we project our miseries unto others making our lives and our environment miserable also. It is a good way to start. My opinion or judgement about so and so… Is it true? Is it 100% true? When I take it to be true, what happens, how do I interact with myself and others? If it had never been true for me, what would have been those circumstances without my story about them? Many times it can become an eye-opener.
Then, as you might practice accepting Mr. A every time he shows up, practice accepting yourself every time you notice you are not being your ideal self, your fully-contented self. Indeed, it may be that you were born to be the way you are, perhaps to learn something about it, perhaps because people need to learn how to deal with people like you and someone has to play that role, perhaps because your upbringing pushed you in that direction, or perhaps for some other reason. As we noted, it’s impossible to say exactly why any of us are born with the personality we have. And as the bible goes..
Most critically, don’t take it too personally. That part of you that is not just right is only part of you. Your essence remains good and pure. It’s just that something has prompted you to develop habits that, deep down, you know are not right for you. Accept that for now and strive to dissolve your judgements and change your ways. Make a plan to develop new and better habits. It’s the classic message: Live and learn. Learn, that is, to be the self your heart longs for you to be. And a crucial step for doing that is to learn to accept yourself the way you now are. It can be critical step toward an even more fundamental goal. As the spiritual master Gururaj Ananda said (quoted in the book, Answers to the Heart🙂 “What is happening to me is only happening for me; it’s for no one else; so I take advantage of it; it is my time, my opportunity to learn to become a better person. If we understand this and if we realize it when it is happening to us, we will have the Universe in the palm of our hand.”
