Last week I wrote about how letting go of the need to judge others increases our own peace of mind. I’d like to offer a story from one of my life experiences as an example.

A very long time ago my family and I were returning from a road trip. We stopped in an unknown town in a small coffee shop to get breakfast. It was dimly lit and we were seated in a booth that shared a wall with another booth. You could not see anyone but it was easy to hear through the latticed divider. As we sat down, and throughout our entire breakfast, I heard the nonstop voice of the man behind me in the next booth. I couldn’t make out what he was saying nor could I figure out why he was talking the entire time we were having breakfast. My judgmental nature was asking the following questions. Was he not allowing his breakfast companion to get a word in? Why did he feel the need to be talking continuously? Was he being rude?

After listening to this for at least an hour, as we got up to go I just had to take a peek to see what the heck was going on. What I saw immediately made me feel ashamed of my judgment of this man. What I saw was an older son, perhaps in his 60s, reading the newspaper to his mother who was obviously blind (special cane and glasses).

Could I have been more wrong or off-base? Did my judgment of this man define him or me? My judgment had nothing to do with him and everything to do with my choice to judge another and negatively at that. I could have attached any meaning to what was going on behind me but I chose to think something negative. What could I have chosen to think instead? I could have wondered what was going on as I had never encountered a situation like that before. I could’ve thought he was telling a story with a captive audience. I could have focused on my time with my family. The meaning I had decided to give this situation had nothing to do with reality. It wasn’t even close to the truth. How often in our lives do we make negative assumptions about others or situations that aren’t true? We make up our own meaning when we don’t know what the truth is.

Where does this negative judgment that we make up about other people come from? Why is it so automatic? It comes from our past experience, how we have been seen and judged by others and now, how we see and judge ourselves.   It didn’t feel good in the past when people judged and criticized us. Now unconsciously, we continue the same criticisms and judgments of ourselves. When we are able to stop defining ourselves by our past painful experiences and stop judging ourselves negatively, we automatically extend the same kindness to others. The more we choose not to judge ourselves the easier and more automatic it becomes.

In case you missed it, there’s a little exercise on last week’s blog that talks about how to let go of judging ourselves or others. You might try experimenting with it and see what happens. What have you got to lose?

When you are tempted to judge another person be aware in your heart, of the negative feeling that results and perhaps think about choosing a kind thought instead. Because the truth is, we are all doing the best we can.

With love, Jackie

One way to have more peace of mind is to stop being judgmental of others.  Being judgmental means having a harsh or critical point of view of someone or something.

Here are just a few reasons why letting go of judgment is helpful.

It can be liberating. Not judging can be extremely liberating when we allow people to be who they are and make the choices that they do. Inside of ourselves we can release others from the need to measure up to our standards. Does anyone want to be judged by someone else’s standards?

We feel better.… It doesn’t feel good inside when we judge others.

We get unstuck…. Being judgmental keeps us stuck in old patterns of thinking that bring us results we don’t like. It brings negativity into our thoughts.

It allows us to see ourselves more clearly… If we’re judging others, we don’t need to take a look at what needs changing about ourselves. This is actually the reason we judge in the first place.

It allows us to be more loving… being judgmental is the opposite of being loving and kind.

In order to be less judgmental, a helpful first step is to stop judging and criticizing ourselves (see blog entry 1 Feb.2015). Once we’ve eliminated our own self judgment (and yes, that’s really possible), it becomes much easier to stop judging others.

If you’d like to increase your peace of mind and give up the need to judge yourself or others, here’s a simple step-by-step process.

1. Clarify the judgmental thought you’re having and don’t criticize yourself for having it. Example: That person is talking very loudly, and that bothers me. What’s wrong with them?

2. Ask yourself “What thought could I choose that would be slightly better, less judgmental?” Example: I’m not sure what’s going on with that person, but they’re very loud. They, or the person they’re talking with, may not hear well. They may be mentally challenged or frightened.

3. Then, anytime you catch yourself having a negative judgmental thought toward yourself, another person or situation, replace it with a different one that brings you more peace or comfort. Wouldn’t it feel better to view others or ourselves with compassion instead of judgment?

Wouldn’t you prefer others “cut you the same slack”? The more you do this, the more automatic it becomes until eventually compassion becomes your first choice. That sounds like a win-win to me!

“When you judge others, you do not define them you define yourself.” – Earl Nightingale

With love, Jackie

“You, as much as anyone in the universe, deserve your love, respect, kindness and compassion.”       -Buddah ( I paraphrased this quote for myself)

Let’s take a look at how we focus our time, energy and effort when we really value something like a new baby, or for some of us, a new pet. We are willing to adjust or even turn our world upside down for them, what time we get up, when they are fed, special food, how much time we spend with them, and much more. So, why don’t we care for ourselves in this way? Because we don’t feel we deserve it, we don’t feel worthy of taking amazing care of ourselves. Most of us never learned how to love and care for ourselves, and we were also taught that it was selfish.

So, what has been the result of not caring for ourselves? We don’t feel good inside, we judge, blame and criticize ourselves. Many of us are overweight, struggle with addictions, are in unhealthy relationships and we have no idea what we would enjoy doing.

What would happen if we took loving care of ourselves? We’d look and feel great, engage in healthy relationships, love what we do for work and we’d take time to do what makes us happy.

So, why not ask yourself “if I were going to take great care of myself, what would be the tiniest thing I could do to begin moving in that direction? What small thought or action would make me feel just a little bit better?” Then take that step… do that thing…and see how it feels inside. You may be surprised by what you discover.

When we love and value ourselves and feel we are worth caring for, our weight, our relationships, our work and what we choose to do with our free time will reflect that.

With love, Jackie

Do you wish your boss, spouse, kids, parents, or co-workers would just stop or start doing certain things so they wouldn’t upset you? If only they would be on time, be more polite, clean up after themselves, be less angry, not disappoint us, or stop micromanaging….. If only they would do that, we would feel better!

If so, we are allowing someone else to determine how we feel. In other words, we are giving our power away, to someone whose actions we can’t control, in order to decide how we feel! If they behave the way we want them to, we feel good, if they don’t, we don’t feel good. We’re leaving it all up to them, not us!

Why would we do that? We complain about other people’s actions or shortcomings to ‘protect’ ourselves from looking at and changing our own behavior. Why? We don’t want to change. We complain about our boss because it’s easier than finding a new job. We complain about our spouse or family member because it’s easier than confronting a problem in our relationship. We yell at our kids because it’s easier than having to follow through with consequences for undesirable behavior. We complain about our coworkers because it’s easier than speaking up for ourselves and setting boundaries at work. What does our choice to blame others get us? It keeps us stuck and protected from having to change ourselves because we want everyone else to do the work of changing.

If we want to take back control of deciding how we feel, the first step is to stop blaming the other person. We are the ones that need to change our choices. We are the only person we can control. The next step might be to ask ourselves the question “what do I want in this situation?” The answer to this needs to be something within our control and not dependent upon anyone else. In other words “what can I change, about myself or my behavior, that would make this situation better for me?”

The good news is that we have the power to make ourselves feel better. The good and bad news is, the only person we can control is ourselves.
If you think about it, it can be liberating!

With love, Jackie

A treat is something that is supposed to leave us feeling good, right?  Many people I see in my practice tell me they like to “treat” themselves by eating certain foods. The foods they are generally choosing are contributing to a situation they dislike very much, that of being overweight. So, I ask this question, “How do you feel after you have “treated” yourself with food”? Their answer is usually something like this, “not good, I wish I wouldn’t have eaten that, I always regret it, it felt good while I was eating it but then…”. When you look at the outcome, not feeling good, isn’t that the opposite of what we were after?

What’s really going on is that we’re feeling uncomfortable emotions and to escape the discomfort of dealing with them, we momentarily cover them over with food (or other substances). I usually phrase it like this, “instead of feeling our emotions and dealing with them with kind and loving behaviors toward ourselves, we eat them instead.” When we choose this path of dealing with uncomfortable emotions guess what? We are guaranteeing their return, just the opposite of what we want.

At one point I realized there would never be enough sweets to stop me from feeling the unwanted, painful emotions that kept resurfacing. The only way to decrease or eliminate them was to deal with them or they would keep coming back, and I would keep eating sweets. Here’s a way to picture it in your mind: you are running and someone is chasing you. They continue to chase you as long as you continue to run. One day you decide to turn around and face them down. That is the day they stop chasing you.

If you want to lose weight like I did, but you keep making food choices inconsistent with weight loss, you are not in control of your choices, your emotions are.
If YOU want to be in charge of your food choices, or any other choice for that matter, you can choose to take the emotional journey.* It may sound scary but look at the alternative, continuing to be overweight, feeling stuck, not feeling good about yourself day after day and perhaps not seeing a way out. The truth is;
“If you want something different, you have to do something different.”

What you might gain; freedom from negative thoughts, judgments and beliefs, feeling lighter and brighter.
What you might lose; emotional and physical weight, a feeling of disempowerment.
You get to choose.

With love, Jackie

* What is the “emotional journey”? It’s allowing ourselves to feel our unpleasant feelings instead of trying to distract ourselves from them. It’s also about using our positive and negative feelings to guide us in our choices.
There’s more information about this on 2 previous blogs (see below) and you can always leave a question or comment on my blog in the section titled “leave a reply”.
– 11 February 2015 “Which direction is your compass pointing?”
– 1 March 2015 “Why can’t I lose weight and keep it off?”