Why is judgment important when it comes to feeling good and happy?
All negative emotions stem from Judgment. We judge ourselves, other and the circumstances happening to us at any given moment. And when we feel negative emotions most of the time, we feel unhappy.
So, what to do when we want to feel happy? How to feel good (or at least better!) even on the most awful days?
In this episode, I introduce you to your Judge. Those inner voices that keep criticizing you, others and the situation you’re in. Those voices rob you of your dreams, because they make you believe your fears and you stop pursuing what you really want.
With specific, real examples, I’ll walk you through the ways how our Judge talks to us. It’s brutal. After listening to this episode, you’ll be able to recognize when the Judge shows up and press the alert button.
Here the liberation comes. I’ll show you, that you can actually say NO to Judge’s lies and the negative emotions she’s causing you.
This episode is your first step to the magic of being responsible for feeling good. It’s your gateway to feeling happy and confident even if shit happens and you’re having the most awful day.
So, pop in those headphones, let’s find the lies your Judge is telling you making you feel terrible and let’s decide to Screw Being Unhappy!
===This episode’s coaching and action ===
Journal through these coaching questions:
- What would your future look like if you didn’t change anything in your life? How will your relationships will be? What will be your money situation? How will be your health?
- How would the most amazing future of your dreams look like? How will your relationships will be? What will be your money situation? How will be your health?
- Which one the two futures do you want?
Look at your judgment in the situation that is bugging you most right now:
- What is the situation that is causing you lots of negative emotions right now? Write it on the top of the page. Then make three columns with headings “judgment of myself”, “judgment of others”, “judgment of circumstances”. Write down all the judgments you can think of.
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Transcript
In today´s episode we’ll dive in deep into Judgement. Thanks to this episode, the coaching and practical tips I’ll share, you’ll be able to stop yourself in the midst of negative emotions caused by judgment. Notice that when you feel bad, anxious, scared, envious or any other emotions, it all stems from some kind of judgment – you’re judging yourself, others or the situation you’re in. After listening this episode you’ll walk away with a new practical way how to reveal and refute judgment, so you can actually feel better, even if your life is not going exactly as planned.
So, let´s dive in. Why did I even choose to talk about judgment in the first place? Maybe you’re asking what is the role of judgment in our internal feeling of being happy. I said it before and I will say it again. Happiness is a choice, and even if we all naturally have some level of positivity or negativity, we can greatly influence how we go through life. Do we want to incline to being happy? Or be negative and unhappy? Think of these three examples:
You’ve just lost job, and you’re not sure when you will get money for your next rent bill.
You keep having arguments with your partner because he stubbornly refuses to change his ways.
You feel miserable because you keep failing at making regular exercising a habit?
All this is about judgment. Even if these situations are hard and I don’t want to downplay that, we still have some wiggle room how to approach it. These situations made you feel bad in multiple ways. You’re experiencing number of negative emotions. All negative emotions stem from Judgment. We judge ourselves, other and the circumstances happening to us at any given moment. And when we feel negative emotions most of the time, we feel unhappy. Do you see the progression of this? Judgment – negative emotions – feeling unhappy?
So, what to do when we want to feel happy? We could define feeling happy as those periods of our lives, when we experience positive emotions for most of the time (not talking of being excited, happy over the moon all the time, but all the range of emotions that are making us feel good – being curious, grateful, grounded, empathetic and so on). And how do we generate positive emotions? By revealing our judgment and refuting it as early as we can. Again, the progression goes here goes as: Refuting judgment and replacing it with different angle – positive emotions – feeling happy.
At this point, I would like to introduce you to somebody. She or he has been with you since ever. She’s with you all the time. She pretends she is your best friend. She tells you what’s wrong with you, what’s wrong with others and what’s wrong with your current situation.
Tadááá meet your Judge, alias Inner Critic. Call it whatever, others call it Resistance, Scarlet, latest by Kevin Hart: Monsters.
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Let me tell you about my Judge. She’s been so strong that I never realized she was my judge. I thought it was just me. The real me. My way, my character. She wanted me to be the best, to be always successful – with studies, work with looks. She convinced me that if she pushes me hard, I´ll become a better person.
She used to say and still says things like this:
You’re not smart enough. The only way you can be successful you need to study or work extra hard.
You’re ugly.
You never be in the “popular girls” circle.
If you want to make your parents love you, you’ve got to have the perfect grades.
You always fuck up your relationships.
Whatever you do, it´s not really enough. Try harder.
Keep in your lane, keep a regular contract job. You’re not a business type.
Your English sucks. What are you even doing having a business in English?! And podcast?! You must have gone mad.
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And so on. Brutal right? Imagine you telling these things to somebody else, that would be unthinkable. So rude! Yet, we keep telling this bullshit to ourselves. Maybe you’re noticing I’m quite passionate about this. Hell yes! When I realized how brutal this is, I couldn’t believe it. How could I have been living with my Judge telling me this? How this impacted me? I know there is better way and I don’t want you or anybody else going through this same hell.
And why does that even matter? What some Judge tells us?
It does. Because most of the times we believe these lies. Yes LIES. Let me repeat that again: these are just LIES. Full blown BS.
And you know what? We can choose to refute them. We don’t have to believe them. You know, how you wouldn’t pay attention to a random stranger telling you that you’re a poor girl from this poor country giving you 5 Euro to buy a warm coffee (yes, this happened to me!). You just knock on your head and move on with your day. You don’t spend rest of your life thinking that you’re a victim, coming from the worst country possible.
When we accept these lies, it impacts our life. I’m not saying that lightly. It really impacts everything. It impacts our thoughts, beliefs, behaviours, habits and decisions.
Maybe you avoid speaking on camera because you think you’re ugly.
Maybe you keep that job you hate, because you believe you don’t have that business spirit in you.
Maybe you stay with this guy, because that is the best you could fine and you think you don’t deserve anyone better.
BUT the biggest evil our Judge does is that it robs us of our dreams. It prevents us from growing. And if we don’t grow and don’t even try to work on our dreams, we die inside.
Do you want that for yourself?
Let me coach you for a bit.
What would your future look like if you didn’t change anything in your life? How will your relationships will be? What will be your money situation? What will be your health?
I urge you to take out your journal and pause this audio. Write it down. You know, listening never changed anyone’s life. The only thing that change your life is DOING SOMETHING. So, pause and write it down.
When you are done, let me ask you this: How would the most amazing future of your dreams look like? How will your relationships will be? What will be your money situation? What will be your health?
Again. Pause. Do it.
This is the reason why I’m here today with you. I want you to see the best future you can have. This is my job as a coach: to make you do what you CAN do. So, let’s learn how to reveal and refute judgment. By doing this, you will be able to feel better even on the shittiest day.
So, lets look a bit closer who is this Judge.
Judge is those inner voices that cause us negative emotions. Judge operates based on FEAR as opposed to love. What is based on love brings positive emotions. What is based on fear, brings negative emotions.
So, whenever you feel scared, pissed off, envious, blaming, pitying, inadequate, not good enough, push the alert button. Judge is here! Hello!
Basically, she asks: What is wrong with me? What is wrong with him? What is wrong with my situation?
Let me pick real situation, because I’m an experiential coach. I love sharing the real examples. Often mine or my clients’, sometimes merged. But one thing you can be sure: it’s real.
Imagine this. Your partner showed up home late, it doesn’t happen too often, but it does happen from time to time. He doesn’t say anything in advance, doesn’t send a message, doesn’t pick up your call. You get pissed, angry and your head starts running with crazy scenarios. You find it unpolite, disrespectful and rude. The moment he finally comes, you blow up or you don’t talk to him. Bottomline is: your evening is ruined. Your trust is shaken. You don’t know what to think about him and your relationship.
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Let’s start from the easiest way of spotting your Judge: judging others. Here is a couple of thoughts you might be having in this situation:
- He is so selfish for not texting me. He knows I’m waiting for him at home and he just doesn’t care.
- I’m the least of his priorities, otherwise he would pick his phone and send me a message. It takes two seconds to do that.
- What’s going on? What is he doing? Is he having a girlfriend? Is he cheating on me?
- He is part of my life, but he still cannot let me in into his. Why he needs to exclude me from his life?
Even if you have just one of these thoughts, you probably feel really bad.
What about judging the circumstances? Here we go:
- Why am I living in this foreign country, while all my family and friends are miles away? I have nobody to support me right now.
- Why did I end up marrying the guy from abroad? Maybe if I found somebody else, we wouldn’t have all these problems.
- I hate being stuck at home alone meanwhile he is out, I don’t even know what he’s doing, probably he’s having lots of fun and I’m wasting my life waiting here for him.
And lastly, the trickiest aspect of the Judge: judging yourself.
- If I were more fun, he would probably be home.
- I always screw up in the relationships, what is wrong with me?
- Why am I so freaked out about it? I hate ruining my evening just because he is a bit late, but I can’t help myself.
- Maybe I am not good enough for him, that is why he doesn’t respect me, even if I asked him a thousand of times to let me know if he is about to come home late.
Now. Let me tell you one thing. All of these are stories of our Judge, guesses or outright lies.
We don’t know what happened. So, judging him is really shaky, and even if it was justified, it doesn’t serve us. Maybe he just didn’t think of it (yes! It can be that simple, men…), maybe he forgot his phone somewhere, maybe he run to the hospital to see his friend who had an accident. Maybe he got sucked into the celebration march and one of the trumpet players stepped on his phone as he dropped it trying to take a selfie for you.
Judging the circumstances puts us into the victim position, it makes us powerless and surprisingly, it doesn’t serve us at all!
Judging ourselves is when it all becomes interesting. Once we reveal the lies of our judge, we realize that maybe the argument was not about him not sending a text, but about the fact, that we are scared that he will leave us or that we’re not good enough. Maybe we realize we are not confident enough to believe that we are one amazing person and he is lucky to be with us.
This was for reveal. Now you know how to recognize your Judge. She is mean, nasty and can be very tricky, making it all sound reasonable and true. She will make whatever in her powers to hold on us tightly. (Disclaimer: I’m not saying that we should always look for faults in our reasoning, maybe sometimes he’s really cheating, not respecting us and we deserve somebody better. That would be a discussion about boundaries, that are so important to have if we want to have healthy relationships, but about that, next time)
Right now, another perfect time to take out your journal. What is the most irritating/negative emotions causing situation for you right now? Write it on the top of the page. Then make three columns with headings “judgment of myself”, “judgment of others”, “judgment of circumstances”. Write down all the judgments you can think of.
Now, this is when MAGIC will happen. The Judge will be always there. We’re all judgmental human beings. We’re not zen masters to say that from now on, we’ll never judge others, we’ll feel ultimate self-love without doubt or be always content with our situation.
That’s not the point. The point is to decide to refute the judgment. We’ve got two choices here, right? We go with judgment and keep those crapy feeling it causes us. Or we hear it, but decide to tell to our Judge “Thank you for letting me know, but I don’t care. Please take a seat while I’m living the life on my terms. Screw You.”.
If you want to be HAPPY you need to do the work. It’s simple yet it’s hard in real life. We’ve been living this way all our lives. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that we won’t be successful in both revealing and refuting judgment from the day one. We’ll fail. We’ll still judge. But it’s the same thing as we don’t create the six-pack the first day in a gym. We need to practice, we need to master it and we shouldn’t be scared of failing. Failing is the way how you will become successful.
So, for now, start noticing your judgments. And once you notice them, ask yourself if you really want to stick with them. Ask yourself if you really want those awful feeling the judgment is causing you?
Journal. Write it on the board in your office or on post-its. Share with your buddy. Be aware.
In episode number six I will teach you the next step. What to choose instead of judgment? And not to leave you hanging with curiosity, let me share now that they are five ways of choosing the response, that will be based on love, unlike being based on fear as it’s with judgment. It’s feeling empathy, becoming curious, seeing the bigger picture, being innovative and my favourite: focusing on our goal and going for it.
I’ll be talking about all this in the upcoming webinar happening in March, so if you want to feel happier, even if life is like a rollercoaster, master your Judge and learn how to respond to the life giving you lemons in the more loving way, grab your free seat now. Go to subscribepage.com/3stepworkshop and I’ll see you there!
Thank you for listening in today and let’s say together Screw Being Unhappy. Let’s say that every single day, especially when the life is hard, because happiness is our choice. So, let’s Screw Being Unhappy and say YES to happiness. Let’s go and let’s do it! Until next time, with love, Zuzana
