My name's Nat and you're listening to The Wonder of Life.
This week we're going to be discussing judgement.
Judgement of others,
Judging ourselves and why I feel learning about judgement is one of the best things you can do to live a happier,
More fulfilled life.
And don't forget,
If you like what you hear you can go to Where's Nat At dot com for more.
Before getting comfortable,
Please make sure that your phone is switched to Do Not Disturb and that if you're in a room that the door is closed.
If anyone else is around you,
Ask them kindly to not interrupt you or ask them to join you.
This is your time to relax and to wonder about life from a place of peace.
Make sure you're comfortable and warm and cosy.
Get yourself settled and relaxed.
We're going to tune in to the breath.
We'll do the first breaths using only the nose.
But before taking your first breath,
Please be aware that when you breathe in with your nose your stomach should inflate.
If it doesn't,
It means you need to correct it.
Breathing through the nose,
Deep into the stomach,
Will relax you.
So breathing through the nose,
Watching the belly rise and then lower is the way to do it.
Let's start.
Breathing in through the nose and out through the nose.
And again,
In through the nose and out.
Four more time,
In through the nose and out.
You're now ready to wonder about life.
This is the wonder of judgment.
Every day we judge people,
Whether we like to think we do or not.
Within the first three seconds of meeting someone,
We judge them.
We decide if we're attracted to them or not.
It's in this moment when our thoughts step in.
We may judge someone because of their past.
We may judge someone because of their behaviour.
We may judge them because we've heard something about them and we've experienced something in our past with that person that makes us judge them in this present moment.
It's judgments that get in the way of our relationships.
It's judgments that get in the way of our true potential.
When we judge ourselves too harshly or we listen to the judgments of others.
Judgment plays a major role in everyone's life.
Judgment has played a role in my life more often than not.
I find it painful when I'm judged,
But funnily enough,
I'm the one that judges myself more than anyone else I know.
I'm the one with a voice in my head that tells me when things aren't quite right or whether I'm doing it wrong or if I could have done it better.
We consistently judge ourselves and we're our own worst critics at times.
I like to think of the analogy like an iPhone.
When I was 14,
I was a certain version of myself.
I was an iPhone 1 maybe or an iPhone 2.
I hadn't been upgraded.
I hadn't had all the new things happen to me.
So I was a pretty basic version of myself.
But to judge me now in 2018 based on the version of me back then wouldn't really make any sense.
We can all upgrade.
We now have iPhone 10s that are far better and far more complex and far quicker than what they were back then.
We all subscribe to the new iPhone.
But what we don't do is subscribe to the new version of people.
Quite often we judge them on when we first met them.
We judge them on the original version of them,
The one that doesn't really stand up in today's world.
When I was 14,
I wasn't the best version of myself.
I was angry at the world.
I was tired.
I'd not even experienced life yet.
I was bitchy and I wanted people to like me.
I'd been through bullying and I was a certain character.
And that character didn't please everyone.
But there are certain people that still judge me today on this 14-year-old version of myself.
Even though I've worked hard and I've tried to change as many things as I can,
Some people's judgment just don't move.
They remain the same.
But we can never be in control of anybody else's judgment.
Someone else's opinion of us is not our problem.
And that's where most of us go wrong.
We try to control the way they feel about us.
We want to please them.
Sometimes we go out of our way to make someone like us,
When really it's unnecessary.
And sometimes we judge ourselves.
And this is the worst kind of judgment because we are in control of this judgment.
We can stop these horrible thoughts that we do to ourselves.
But sometimes we don't know how to and we don't see these judgments that we make until somebody else points it out to us.
Learning not to judge is difficult.
It's natural.
I think everyone I know loves to people watch.
It's something we love to do.
But we need to start to learn to love ourselves a little bit more.
And to not judge ourselves so harshly.
And to know just like Apple,
We can bring out a new version of ourselves at any time.
We can always upgrade.
And sometimes we may even downgrade.
But it doesn't mean that we can't upgrade again.
We're constantly changing.
Our opinions,
Our thoughts and other people.
Our judgments lock us in a time zone.
And it's not warranted.
It's not flexible enough.
We need to learn to adapt to new behavior.
And when people say a leopard can't change its spots,
That's true.
A leopard can't change its spots and it wouldn't want to.
But humans can change.
And we can change our behavior.
We actually often judge other people.
And when we do this,
We're judging their behavior,
Acting as if we would never do what they're doing.
But more often than not,
We too have been guilty of that same act.
We'll talk about people behind their back.
And we'll judge them on their reactions to certain events in their life.
Saying that if we'd have had that event,
We would have acted differently.
But we never really know until we're in that situation.
And we often forget how we've acted in the past.
I myself suffered from a superiority complex,
Genuinely believing that some of the things that happened around me,
I would not do.
And then having friends pull me up on it and say,
Do you remember when?
And then I'd have to admit that I too had acted in that way,
Embarrassed and sheepish because somebody had called me out on it.
When I started to realize judgments played such a huge role in my life,
I worked very hard to try and change that.
And to this day,
I still judge it sometimes.
But I also don't judge myself for it.
As soon as the thought comes up,
I know that it's a lower vibration.
I know that it's generally negative.
And I allow it,
But I also correct myself and I look for the positive.
And as I said,
It's not easy,
But it's a simple practice that you can do to move past your judgments.
I'd like you to think for a moment,
If there's anyone in your life that you're currently judging on their previous behavior.
And yes,
It might not be behavior that you agreed with,
But nevertheless,
It's your judgment.
It's you that's holding on to that judgment.
And at any point,
You can let it go.
To love someone instead of judge them is sometimes harder for people.
It does take the bigger man or the bigger woman to learn to love instead of judge.
If you can try and remember maybe three people in your life that you have at some point judged that you know personally,
Then you'll start to contemplate this even more.
Start to think about how you feel about that judgment.
And is it really true?
And if it exists,
Can you correct it?
Maybe can you talk to that person?
Can you explain how you feel?
Try and resolve those judgments as often as you can.
I appreciate if you listen to this today and I want you to know that I'm with you.
I've made more mistakes than I care to remember and no one is perfect.
There's nothing to be embarrassed of.
You can always upgrade to the new version of you.
At any moment,
We can press reset and we can upgrade.
Thank you for listening to the Wonder of Life.
