S1E9 - Non-Judgment For Mental Health & Better Problem Solving
Hey, it's Katy, and I'm here to help you befriend your mind, body, and soul. If you stick around with me long enough, you might find that you're a mindful soul too. Welcome to today's episode where I'm really excited to to be talking with you about one of the core mindfulness practices. This is one that I teach in my course, and it's actually one of the more challenging mindfulness practices, but it's also one of the most helpful.
So I'm hoping that what you learn today will be something that can Help you save yourself emotional pain, because that's what this is all about, right? So we're gonna be talking about the practice of non judgment. Mindfulness is a non judgmental practice, and this one is so challenging because not only is our brain wired to make judgments, it's how we make sense of the world, it's how we determine You know, what's a tree or what's a rock?
Our brain automatically makes judgments, but it's also something that we're trained to do. We're socialized to judge. This is good. This is bad. This is right. This is wrong. So we're going to start by talking about why non judgment practice is actually beneficial. And before we do that, I want you to think about, do you struggle Do you yourself, like being critical of yourself, holding yourself to high standards, or do you struggle more with judging others?
And we all do this, like one of my favorite phrases here is that when you catch yourself judging, don't judge your judging. We all judge ourselves. We all judge other people sometimes. It's called being a human. But sort of think about for you, Which one of those you struggle more with? Maybe you're more critical towards yourself, or maybe you find yourself being more critical towards others.
And so, whichever one that is, keep that in mind as we go through learning this. because judgments will intensify our emotional pain, okay? They'll also intensify any positive emotions that we're feeling, but the point is that when we judge something, it's going to magnify our view of that thing and magnify the emotion that we're feeling in relationship to it, okay?
So before we get into the nitty gritty of how do we practice non judgment and again a little deeper into why it's helpful, I actually want to differentiate between two different kinds of judgments that we can make. And, the first kind of judgment is something called a discriminatory judgment. And a discriminatory judgment is when we're differentiating differences between two things.
Like I mentioned earlier, this is a tree, this is a rock. This is an apple, this is an orange. And it's actually really important that our brain be able to differentiate between two different things, because if we couldn't do that, we would have a lot of trouble navigating the world. Um, we wouldn't be able to look at a river that's rushing and has huge boulders in it and go, Wow, the current is really rushing fast.
Maybe I shouldn't jump in right now. We wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a peach that has mold on it and one that doesn't. And so we would bite into the peach that has mold on it. When we're at a stoplight, we need to be able to tell the difference between the red light and the green light.
So discriminatory judgments are things that we need. They're things that our brain can automatically do to sort of categorize and classify the world. These are okay. However, these can also become problematic when we exaggerate. the difference between something, between two things. So we see this in things like racism, um, sexism, you know, all of these other places where there's maybe discrimination that's happening.
where we exaggerate the difference between this group of people and that group of people. So, we can acknowledge there may be differences between two different groups of people. However, when we add on this second kind of judgment that I'm going to talk more about next, it's called our subjective evaluative judgments.
That's when we start to get into trouble. So, what is a subjective or evaluative Judgment. These are the kinds of judgments where we're now adding value or taking value away from something. So this is where we're saying, apples are really good, they're the best fruit in the world, or oranges are the worst fruit in the world, they're disgusting and horrible, right?
We're adding on our subjective evaluation of the item or object. And this is. Or person, and this is problematic because subjective judgments are not facts, and they're gonna vary depending on the person that you ask. So one person might say, Oh, it's wonderful. The sun is shining today. What a beautiful day.
And another person, I live here in California, might say, This is terrible. We're in a drought. There's too much sun. And we need more rain, okay? So, the subjective evaluative judgments are where we start to get into trouble, and when we add these kinds of judgments onto our life and situations that we experience, this is where we're going to ignite our emotions to a more intense level.
So, if we look out, it's a rainy day, and we say, okay, today is raining. That's a fact. We're discriminating between the weather. It's a rainy day today. Um, but then we add the evaluation. This is so gloomy and terrible. Right, and we add on the subjective judgment to the rain, coloring the picture differently.
We're adding to the facts of reality in a way that's going to then impact your mood and your emotional experience of that day. So practicing this non judgmental skill or practice is really about just seeing reality as it is. Just seeing the facts of reality, nothing more, nothing less, and another mindfulness practice that comes in here is the use of our five senses.
So what we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch, those are the things that give us access to what is actually here in this present moment. What are the facts of reality? Can I see it, smell it, taste it, touch it, right? So Um, just looking at the facts of things without adding on these subjective judgments that are going to change our experience of life.
So let's go back to my earlier question, which is, do you typically find yourself judging yourself more? Or judging others more. Let's take the example of judging yourself, okay? Let's say you did a presentation at work, and it did not go as well as you would have liked. Okay, maybe you stumbled over your words, maybe you forgot a portion of the presentation, or whatever.
And so, You leave your work that day and you are criticizing yourself. I'm such an idiot. What is wrong with me? I completely failed that right? that judgment of yourself and your presentation is only going to increase the emotion of shame and embarrassment or Disappointment and frustration rather than we can acknowledge Something didn't go as planned we didn't reach the goal the way we would have liked to, we can acknowledge that without adding on the judgment that I'm a total failure and a complete idiot, right?
So letting go of that self judgment is going to save you a lot of pain and suffering. You still might feel some disappointment or embarrassment at what happened, but you're not going to intensify it more than it needs to be by adding on that layer of judgment that just lights a fire under it. Like, life is already painful enough as it is.
We can't escape painful emotions completely. Let's just try to not add to them more than we need to with adding on these subjective judgments, right? And the same can go for when we're judging others. So, it's really easy to look around at the world and point at other people and judge them for their behavior, their actions, and say, oh, that person's an idiot, or that person doesn't know what they're doing, and like, have these subjective judgments on other people, which is only going to ignite our frustration even higher.
and make us less effective at whatever we are trying to do, right? So one of the reasons why we lean so hard on judgments is because we have this false belief that if we judge something, that will change it. If I criticize myself hard enough and tell myself how bad I am at that thing, maybe that'll motivate me to do better next time.
Or if I criticize that other person, if we come down hard on that group of people and really judge them hard enough, then that'll make them change. And this is just a completely false assumption, okay? Judging things does not change things. It's a much more complicated process than that. And so a lot of people think that if we practice non judgment that we're just going light on negative things that are happening in the world, or we're being passive about things, we're letting things slide that shouldn't slide, and that is absolutely not true.
So we can not judge something and still work to change something. Not judging something doesn't mean we don't acknowledge that there are maybe negative or painful consequences that come with certain behaviors. So we can acknowledge that when people speed through a neighborhood, the chances of hitting a child is higher, and if you hit a child, there are really painful negative consequences that come to that.
There's a lot of pain, right? We can acknowledge when things are harmful. Without adding on these judgments of what a complete and utter failure that person is to society or, you know, how stupid and selfish and blah, blah, blah they are. Like, I'm trying to throw out a lot of these judgments that sometimes people have.
Because here's the thing, is that when we ignite our rage higher than it needs to be or we ignite our pain even higher than it needs to be, We become way less effective at working towards the changes that need to happen in Society and in life, right? Like when we're raging We're probably not going to promote change in a way that's gonna Be most likely to work or have other people be receptive to Changing the speed limit in the neighborhood or putting up cameras or whatever So, having a very strong emotional reaction to something that's harmful may be justified, right?
There are times when very high anger is completely justified, or sometimes even shame and embarrassment can be justified, or fear. And so this isn't about not experiencing those emotions and then maybe acting on them to make changes in life, because that's what emotions can help us do sometimes, but the Ignite those emotions higher, higher, higher, to where then they become paralyzing or completely ineffective at reaching our goals.
Let's take a less extreme example, and let's say, you know, you get into an argument with your partner, and they did something that was hurtful towards you, and you know, you're trying to talk and resolve the issue. If you're not practicing the non judgmental skill, you might come at them with, you know, what's wrong with you?
You always do this thing, and you're such a terrible person for doing this thing. And so when we come at people with these judgmental terms, it puts their guard up, and it can damage the relationship. And it's not the most effective way to communicate our needs and talk about things in a way that's going to be most likely to resolve the issue.
So, we might be able to say, listen, when you said this thing, it made me feel this emotion, and I didn't like it. And I would really appreciate it if we don't do this thing again, right? Or if you try to do this instead. And so we can communicate our needs and our preferences and our dislikes, but do it in a way that's non judgmental.
It's going to benefit your relationship with others. And even before that, this is your relationship with yourself, too. So when you do something that you let yourself down, or it's not really what you wanted to do, or you're disappointed in yourself, you can acknowledge that. I did something that didn't align with my values, or I didn't do something as effectively as I would have liked to.
And you can acknowledge that and acknowledge maybe the embarrassment or the sadness or the frustration that comes from it, but there's no need to add on The judgment towards yourself because that's going to damage your relationship with yourself And it's really not going to do anything to make things different the next time.
So this is sort of a brief overview of this concept of non judgmental practice and how we can be mindful of our thoughts and And mindful when they become judgmental towards ourselves or towards the world or towards others and notice that impact on our emotions and our responses. Learning how to do this is not easy, because like I mentioned at the beginning, we're wired to judge, we're socialized to judge, and so a lot of this really is an unlearning process, and when you try to commit to developing this skill set for yourself, it takes time, and it takes practice, and it's one of the reasons why going through a course on mindfulness or a program where you're not just going to hear the information and, oh cool, new idea, great, and then move along through your day.
You're going to have some homework, you're going to have some worksheets to hold you accountable, to actually practice Each day being a little more aware of those thoughts. Is that a judgment? Oh, there's a judgment I'm judging again. But again, we're not gonna judge our judging when it comes up because it will, but it's just about noting, noting a judgment when it's there.
And the more we can become aware of those judgments, then we can practice letting them go. Trying to describe just the facts of the situation, acknowledging our thoughts and our feelings, but not adding on that unnecessary subjective evaluation, which is only going to make us suffer. More. So, I would love to hear your thoughts about this practice.
Always, I am available, reach out, send me a DM, shoot me an email, I love to chat and connect about these things. Even if you're like, wait, I don't really agree with that, or that seems off, or I don't understand how that could be, I would love to chat with you about that, because sometimes these are new concepts that are a little bit, like, not what we're normally taught.
So, I can't wait to hear from you. Thank you. And. Thanks for tuning in, ready to start your mindful soul journey. Sign up for my free life balance workbook linked in the show notes and come hang out with me on my email list. Can't wait to see you there.
