Self

Why the Focus on Judgement Being a Bad Thing to Practice?

Without it we’d never decide about anything

The word carries so many meanings.

I’m as culpable as anybody of becoming captured in the trap of assuming we should avoid making judgements, the idea being they’re negative.

But this isn’t a court of law where a judge determines the punishment for your misdemeanors.

Other explanations of judgement are:

• The capacity to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions.
• Criticize or condemn someone from a position of assumed moral superiority.
• Evaluate the worth or character of someone or something

Then we have expressions such as

• Reserve judgement — delay judging or giving one’s opinion.
• Against one’s better judgement — contrary to what one perceives to be wise.
• Sit in judgement — assume the right to judge an individual, especially in a critical tone.

We have a predilection to fixate on the negative

Or I should say our brain does.

We inherited this attribute from our forebears, where paying attention to what could go wrong was fundamental to our survival — a matter of life and death.

There’s a little region in our brain shaped like an almond called the amygdala, where we deposit our long-term memories.

Psychologist Rick Hansen, PhD, founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, calls it “the alarm bell of your brain.”

He claims

“The amygdala uses about two-thirds of its neurons to look for bad news. Once it sounds the alarm, negative events and experiences get quickly stored in memory, in contrast to positive events and experiences.”

Many of us will recall the Bible verse “Judge not lest ye be judged”. The explanation is, don’t condemn others or they may condemn you.

Here’s another:

“He one who points his finger has three pointing back at him.” — Native American Proverb

Implicit in both these proverbs is we should avoid judgement altogether.

Research reveals that the scales tip negative emotions against positive in a ratio of 3:1. Yet if we review the definitions of the term judgment, two of the three I presented are positive.

Judgement isn’t all bad

We misinterpret it in the same sense as the word criticism. But there’s negative and constructive criticism — the first condemns, the latter builds.

So too for judgement.

When assessing another’s personality, I admit we project aspects of ourselves we dislike onto others, but provided we realize what we’re doing, we can stop. Our negativity bias is at play, and we can reset our default mode.

Why not recognize that which we appreciate in another person — stress the positive?

But judgement is likewise our capacity to generate the right decisions and draw the correct conclusions on many issues life offers us. We weigh up, appraise, engage our wisdom and intuition, look at our choices.

We can harness our powers of discernment and emotional intelligence to form judgements free of prejudice. Do it with Love!

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” — Rumi

Thank you for being here.

My response to this week’s prompt Judgement, another inspiring topic from 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊.