How do WE Break the Cycle of Judgement Society Teaches us From Day One?

E2T 90 Day Letting Go Experiment Days 5 & 6

The circle of people tightened in, our shoulders touching. “I remember when I was five,” the workshop leader said, “and I played on the ice with wild abandon. I moved and danced, I fell, I laughed, and it brought me such happiness. Then as I grew, I learned that when I did something right, I was praised, and when it wasn’t perfect, it was wrong. Falling became failure, who I was and who I grew to be wasn’t good enough. I walked with the negative thoughts every day, I let them hold me back from happiness.”

Tears began to well in my eyes, for the emotions pouring from this beautiful soul. I felt his emotions deeply, it had been my experience growing up as well, not in a competitive sports arena, but in academics, what I looked like, who I was as a person, but I hadn’t realized that I’d carried it so far into my adult life.

My brain had said for years, You’re a failure. You tried to build a business and you haven’t succeeded. You think you can dance? Don’t you understand you’ve started too late? Why do you put so much time into it? You should just quit and be more practical. Skating, don’t you understand you’re never going to be able to do this well? Just hide. Writing, you had one book, and according to the publishing world, YOU, should’ve sold a million copies. It’s your fault it didn’t do as well, and make the publishers enough money. You shouldn’t eat that. It’s going to make you fat. Aren’t you supposed to stay within certain caloric limits?

The list of judgements never stopped. They came with each step I walked.

I chose, as I stood in that safe circle, to take them out of their darkness, to look them straight in the eye, and ask, “Where did you come from?”

I didn’t find an answer.

Surrounded by all these beautiful people I looked at the tears in their eyes that matched my own. They each carried the judgment — they too knew the pain.

If you met me at a function, or at the rink, you wouldn’t see anything but confidence. I know who I am, I make no apologies for it in life. Yet, often in the darkness of my mind, with each step I take I have to overcome the verbal abuse I put on myself.

Instead of saying, look you’ve never quit at building a business, it’s been hard, you’ve struggled, you’ve listened to other people instead of your own instincts, but you learned. That in itself is success. Then I look on social media and see someone who has succeeded, and wonder if there’s something wrong with me.

Yet listening to the leader of this workshop, staring into the eyes of those around me, they too, within all their confidence, carry the same burden of judgment.

As soon as we don’t act in a way a leader, a doctor, a coach, a boss, a teacher, a parent, a lover wants, we are judged. I tried to remember the first time I felt judged, and couldn’t pinpoint one thing. From a very young age I was told I was pretty, intelligent, but too emotional. I realized even the pretty and intelligent, which are compliments, were judgements — classification. It’s not meant to harm, yet does it? If you feel loved in that compliment, don’t you want to continue to seek that love and approval in that same way?

Since I couldn’t find answers to why my brain judged, but I was realizing it started somewhere around four or five, I had to question what it would mean to let it all go. This has been the hardest part of my letting go experiment. To no longer judge myself, others, nor what happens.

Eckhart Tolle and many phycologists have stated that the brain has a part of it, “the pain body” that actually seeks displeasure and pain. It feeds on negativity as it reinforces the ego, and though we state that we don’t enjoy it, this part of our brains actually does. If you’ve ever lost your temper and couldn’t control it, well, welcome to the pain body.

Does this pain body in one person, easily translate to teaching us when we’re young to become a part of a judging society? Does it force the perceptions of what is good and what is bad, by telling us who to be, so that when we grow, we accept it like we accept the fact that we need food, water, and sleep?

To let it go, to lose all judgment of what happens, would mean to be present and in acceptance — to never care again what anyone else thought of us, or even what that “pain body” wanted to feed upon?

If we looked at our lives through the eyes of five-year-old child who loved to learn, play, and experience life fully without judgment, could we be happier? And if one person began the cycle of non-judgement, would they give permission to those around them?

For four days, I tried to stay in non-judgment. I failed at times. Well more than a few. But in the letting go, in the recognizing of when I did judge, I became free to stop it. It became a choice instead of an unconscious thought.

It will take time to reprogram my own mind. Almost with each step now I have to stop and say, “Nah not today. You don’t get to be a part of me anymore. I want to be that child, seeking pleasure in the world. I want to explore and experience every moment. I want freedom from you. You’re no longer welcome.”

How do you judge yourself, others, or what happens? Are you willing to listen? To choose a different cadence to your mind? Could allowing judgement to release change how you live? I’d love to hear your comments below.

You have one life, one body, one playground earth — how will you choose to treat this gift of life?