How to Stop Judging and How to Let Go When Others Judge You

Letting go of judgment is a central part of mindfulness practice and is vital to safeguard your mental health. It is likely that at some point you have been criticized and left to feel like you are not good enough.

As a result, holding on to such painful memories is not uncommon. Consequently, this dampens your inner light and leads to anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Additionally, judgment engenders hatred, distrust, and separation.

With mindfulness, however, we can maintain a peaceful mind and learn to let go.

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Non-Judging and What It Means to Let Go

Letting go is freedom, and it is power. If you are dwelling on the past, it means you are holding on to something that can never be changed.

Likewise, worrying about the future means you are allowing something you cannot control, to control you.

By focusing on the past and future, you are holding on to worry, regret, and anxiety, rather than allowing things to be and working with the present moment.

In the same way, when you hold on to judgment you are holding on to pain rather than healing it.

When it comes to eradicating prejudice in society, the journey begins within.

In truth, we are all capable of being critical in some form or another. If someone has judged you, it is not uncommon to want to judge them in return.

This is what makes it so difficult to really put an end to prejudice.

Furthermore, our own judgmental and critical thoughts often slip under our radar. In some cases, we refuse to admit that they exist, but these thoughts can intensify if we are not aware of them.

They can become unconscious in our behavior and in the way we react and treat other people.

Only unhappy people want others to suffer.

When you hold on to judgment, it will imprison you and its energy will create pain in your life.

In fact, this pain will live inside of you, seeking to bring more suffering into the lives of others.

It can manifest as passive aggression, hurtful words, or worse, acts of violence and cruelty. All of which fuels a cycle of delusion that yearns to be corrected.

Hence, we must understand this cycle and the causes behind it, so we can end it.

If you have chosen to judge, then you have chosen fear over love, and pain over joy.

Hatred does not need to exist.

Hate holds no truth, no merit, and no reality without our protection. While prejudice and discrimination exist in many forms, their source stems from the human psyche.

Judging others based on their gender, skin color/race, sexuality, religion, age, finances, health, appearance, etc., is all part of the same psychological sickness. It originates from ignorance and fear.

Judgment Take Two Forms:

1.    Being judged

2.    Judging Others

Both contribute fuel to the cycle of hatred and are equally damaging.

Therefore, letting go of judgment consists of:

1.    Letting go when you have been judged

2.    Practicing non-judging, or simply put: letting go of your own judgmental thoughts

Both are ways to practice mindfulness and reclaim your power, joy, and peace.

What happens in the world is a symptom of what takes place in the mind.

Understanding the Source of Judgment

Judgment means to “form an opinion or conclusion.” When you view something as bad, ugly, or stupid, these are all opinions that are based on your individual interpretations.

This is not a reflection of absolute truth. Nonetheless, many people take their opinions to be facts and are unaware of the delusion their mind holds.

For example, it is not uncommon for people to have varying opinions about politics, but it does not mean that these opinions are factual.

On the other hand, a fact reflects certainty and is known and proven, rather than thought and believed.

So, instead of protecting our opinions, we must work to defend love and righteousness.

All judgments are based on individual interpretations, and all interpretations are merely thoughts. Therefore, they can be changed.

When you understand hatred, you will see that it isn’t personal.

When we come into this world, we experience it without judgment.

As we get older, we begin to interpret our experiences and form opinions and ideas about what we perceive.

Eventually, we start to see the world through a lens of our own thoughts and become identified with our personal views, regardless of whether or not they are facts.

In other words, our ability to perceive correctly is hijacked by how our minds have been conditioned.

Thus, we must learn to see the world objectively again so we can let go of our clouded views. To help you identify your own conditioning, read Uncover the Hidden Mysteries of Your Core Beliefs.

How to Let Go of Judgment

Letting go of the Personal, and Recognizing the Impersonal

Once the mind has established a mode of thinking, it has difficulty recognizing opposing viewpoints.

While being criticized is hurtful, seeing that it is not personal or a true reflection of ourselves can help us remain unaffected by it. In the other person’s mind, they believe that their viewpoint is correct.

There is no openness in them to accept any other perspective. What is an opinion, becomes an absolute truth in their mind. In other words, they believe that their thoughts are facts. This is a distortion of reality and has no real hold over you.

4 Ways of Letting Go of Judgment and Inviting Peace and Love into Your Life

Condemning those who hurt us only fuels the cycle of hatred. Likewise, we may delude ourselves into thinking we are better than the other person, and thus, we don’t see the prejudice in ourselves.

In fact, this only adds to the illusion of separation. To be clear, there are times it is important to take a stand, but don’t hold onto hatred.

In addition, healing your mind from self-criticism and feelings of inferiority is your responsibility. So, letting go of self-loathing also helps you let go of your prejudice toward others.

1.     Don’t let Judgment Hide in Your Mind, Stop Judging Others

Mindfulness practice means we embrace each moment with full awareness and without judgment. Whether you’re home, at work, or driving, start noticing anytime your mind has a judgmental thought.

These thoughts may be directed at people you are with, drivers on the road, your environment, yourself, or even inanimate objects.

Acknowledge and accept that judgment is present in the mind. Then do not judge yourself for having judgmental thoughts because they are not conscious.

They have been conditioned.

Again, observing your mind and non-judging is part of practicing mindfulness. It allows you to see the way things are beyond your biases, making your mind more peaceful.

2.     Challenging Your Thoughts

Once you notice you have judged someone or something, challenge your thinking. How true is it? Look for evidence for and against it.  Ask yourself, where did this idea and type of thinking originate from?

Then, challenge yourself to see another perspective and recognize the relativity of your thinking. Notice how it makes you feel when you judge someone. 

See how it creates an inner disturbance and ask yourself whether you want to maintain this inner disturbance or let the judgment go.

3.     Stop Judging Yourself

Often, we are our own worst critics. If you constantly put pressure on yourself to be perfect, this can have detrimental effects.

For example, you may be judging yourself based on an idea of what you believe perfection is and you may hold yourself to unrealistic standards.

Likewise, if you make a mistake, learn from it and move on. Once you stop judging yourself, this will lead to letting go of judgment of other people.

4.     What to do When Others Judge You

Other people’s judgments are not a reflection of your worth. If someone said, ‘You are a shoe’, you wouldn’t take this seriously.

In the same way, if someone said ‘you are stupid’ or attacks your appearance, you don’t have to take in what they say as truth.

The best way to stop taking people’s opinions to heart is through self-love, self-compassion, and self-acceptance. You are good enough.

Don’t take other people’s thoughts personally. Their judgments are their own unconscious conditioning. If they knew the truth, they would not know separation.

Regardless of hateful intentions, another person’s opinion cannot be an attack upon you because they are words. Words have no power when your choose not to listen to believe them.

Recognize that the other person’s psyche has been hijacked and they are unable to perceive you correctly. If they could, they would not see you as separate from them.

When you are grounded in your own truth, you will not be moved by another person’s delusions. This is how you “turn the other cheek” and protect yourself from believing that you are not enough.

When You Choose To Let Go of Judgment You Choose Love

Practicing mindfulness by letting go of judgment and becoming more aware of your thoughts, will safeguard your mental health.

Without it, it is easy to fall into patterns of anger, criticism, fear, and low self-esteem.

Thus, mindfulness gives rise to kindness, compassion, and acceptance, and creates the conditions for a peaceful, loving, and happy mind.

The commonality between us is that we all want to be loved and accepted. On the other hand, discrimination does the opposite. As a result, those who are constantly in a state of judgment are in a state of dissatisfaction and agitation. They are suffering.

While we can’t control what other people do, we can break this cycle within ourselves. This is how we heal the human mind from its delusions and invite more joy, love, and acceptance into our world and our lives.

Lastly, the deepest truth is that we are all one. By letting go of judgment we can heal the delusion that we are separate beings with separate lives.

So, I bow to you, not because of inferiority or superiority, but because we are one.

Read about Oneness in this short article next.

With full love,

Ravelle

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