However, ultimately being judgmental is a self-esteem problem. By finding something to dislike or condemn about others, we are a protecting ourselves from being vulnerable, b avoiding our own faults, and c inflating our egos with false self-worth. All of these points relate back to our frail self-esteem.
So how do we end the habit of judgmentalism? The answer is that above all, you will need to work on your self-esteem. The more accepting you are of yourself, the more accepting you will be of others.
Conversely, the more rejecting you are of yourself, the more rejecting you will be of others. Your self-talk involves all the thoughts you have about yourself in waking reality. Good opportunities to do this often happen while interacting with others, going to work, looking at yourself in the mirror, or making a mistake.
You can also use your emotions to hook yourself into your inner talk. What thoughts or assumptions are behind your feelings? Next, in a journal, record your self-talk. Do this every day, without fail! Try to find common themes or patterns that reveal your underlying core beliefs. These beliefs will give you something to work with. Easier said than done, right?
But by slowly and steadily working to accept yourself, you become less critical of others as well. Self-acceptance is about honoring and allowing space for all that it means to be human. Instead of putting yourself up to high standards, self-acceptance is about realistically looking at yourself, understanding why you are the way you are, and embracing who you are at a core level.
When we judge others, we tend to do so quickly as a result of our beliefs and misconceptions. But jumping to conclusions blinds us, causing us to quickly shut off and ignore the complexity of others. For example, people who are mean, cruel, shallow, untrustworthy, or unfriendly almost always act from some kind of inner pain — usually fear or sadness more about that here.
By looking beneath the facade and immediate appearance of a person, we often find very human and tragic struggles. This, in turn, helps us to show compassion. Be willing to be wrong. None of us can. So whenever you start to feel that wall go up between yourself and another, stop. When being judgmental is a habit, it causes your mind to become narrow so that you see with tunnel vision.
You cease to be grounded in reality , becoming lost in the world of your judgments instead. One of my favorite practices to counteract judgmentalism is mindfulness exercises. Mindfulness is about paying attention to the present moment. When you start to feel the walls of judgmentalism go up, try noticing your surroundings instead.
You may still notice that certain types of behavior seem unappealing. Discernment is awareness and understanding without an emotional response. Exercising discernment feels very different from getting your buttons pushed. Judgments that cause emotional reactions are clues to help you find personal insight.
When you explore beliefs and assumptions instead of judging people, you open a door to expanded self-awareness and self-acceptance. Rather than unconsciously delighting in the ego gratification of judging others, you let your reactions and judgments help you achieve greater self-understanding—and accordingly, greater happiness and success. Photo by mark sebastian.
Jarl Forsman is the co-founder of gratitudetwentyfourseven. She and her husband, Steve Sekhon, craft free Daily Insights guiding readers to fulfill their potential and discover happiness within. This site is not intended to provide and does not constitute medical, legal, or other professional advice. The content on Tiny Buddha is designed to support, not replace, medical or psychiatric treatment.
Please seek professional care if you believe you may have a condition. Kids learn to mimic what they hear, and that kind of social mimicry can carry on well into adulthood.
Many critical people hold incredibly high standards to adhere to, both for themselves and others. You might see this in people who have either lost a ton of weight through strict diet and exercise, or quit a habit like alcohol or drug addiction. This often happens due to a sense of self-loathing, whether current or in retrospect. They might have deleted all past photos of themselves from social media, burned physical photographs, and refuse to even think about how they looked before. When they see others who have a similar shape to the one they used to have, their former self-loathing is projected onto the other.
This stems from the previous comment about self-loathing. Same goes for physical fitness. Their criticism and judgment is all about covering up their own hurt and feeling of inadequacy. As a result, they could either be dealing with imposter syndrome, or are insecure and unhappy with their life choices. It should be no surprise, then, that people who are overly judgmental tend to have a negative, pessimistic attitude towards life.
Being overly judgmental is a defense mechanism: by criticizing others, you protect yourself from a negative evaluation. Thus, the judgments made by such a person will often work in their favor by dismissing those dissimilar to themselves as lesser. A scientist who frequently criticizes the arts, for example, is more likely to be an overly judgmental person than, say, the scientist who criticizes her own profession. In his or her rush to condemn others, an overly judgmental person often will not stop to gather all the facts.
Once again, this is because the act of judging—and classifying—is more important than the long-term accuracy of the judgment itself. Thus, even when working with scant evidence, such a person will often rush to a conclusion. As critical as an overly judgmental person may be of others, the sword is often sharpest when they turn it on themselves.
Given their wealth of knowledge about themselves, it's also often the most debilitating. At the root of an overly judgmental mindset is a desire to keep others at bay. Through constant criticism and labelling, other people are kept at arm's length, shrouded as they are in classifications like "bad" or "ugly," as opposed to being seen for who they are. This generally comes from a distrust of others—many judgmental individuals assume that, if they let other people get close, they'll wind up hurt.
Because an overly judgmental person is generally threatened by others, they seek to understand those they fear by labeling them. Thus, such a person will often be unable to tolerate ambiguity, as it makes it more difficult to fit said person into a neat little box.
In much the same way that overly judgmental people have difficulties accepting the variability of their fellow humans, they also struggle to see the mixed consequences of many actions. Instead of recognizing an act as, say, good in some ways and bad in others—as most are—they see an act which is either "good," or "bad," no ifs, ands, or buts.
While most people are a bundle of confused—and often paradoxical—traits, an overly judgmental person will tend to focus on one such aspect of someone's personality, allowing it to crowd out the rest. Thus, they tend to reduce people to one dimension: the brilliant scholar who often daydreams becomes, for them, "that space cadet," while her many accomplishments are swept under this rug of criticism.
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