How You Judge Others Is How You Judge Yourself

What you say about those around you is really just a reflection of how you feel about yourself and the life you are living. 

If you are somebody who constantly judges others, it’s probably because you are being judged and are trying to feel better about yourself and trying to improve self-esteem. 

If you judge somebody based on their failures, it’s probably because you haven’t taken enough risk and don’t realize that failing is the only way to truly grow. 

If you judge somebody based on the success that they have achieved over the course of their life, it’s probably because you are envious of the fact that you haven’t yet achieved that same level of success. 

Either way, you only judge somebody in an effort to make yourself feel better about your life and your current circumstances. 

When we experience low self-esteem, that’s what happens. We resort to judging others based on any and every “flaw” we can find just so we can feel better about ourselves and the pain we are feeling deep down. That’s all it is. We are just trying to mask the pain we are feeling deep down inside. 

Stop Judging Yourself

All too often we allow our self-esteem to be controlled by the world around us, but in all reality, this is not true. It is we, as individuals, who control our own self-esteem. We are the sole creators for the exact emotions we feel in life. 

We do not need to be loved by others before we can start loving ourselves. We do not need to be perceived as successful by the world around us before we can finally start to feel successful ourselves. We do not to be told by others that our life is amazing, beautiful, and worth living before we can start feeling these very ways about our very lives. But this is exactly what we continue to do. 

We allow the world to first tell us how to feel about ourselves, how to feel about our lives and the route in which we should be taking with our future. In doing so, we are only allowing the outside world to control our lives instead of taking full advantage of the one opportunity we have to live. 

What it really comes down to is how we judge ourselves. If we do not judge ourselves, there will be no need to compete with those around us and pick out their flaws in an effort to mask our pain. If we do not judge ourselves, we will not listen to the pain in which others are trying to inflict on us. If we do not judge ourselves, only then will we be the sole creator in the life that we have, as well as the life we are moving towards.

The only way to fully live the one life you are blessed enough to live is to stop judging yourself. If you do not judge yourself, then the world around you will not judge you. Either that or you just won’t feel the need to pay attention.

Stop Judging Those Around You

Judgment is a two-way street here though. Just as you can’t fully live your life by listening to the judgment of others, you also can’t fully live your life by going around and judging those around you. When you do, you are still judging yourself. Judging others simply means that you are trying to find something wrong within others as an effort to mask the internal pain in which you are feeling. 

If we judge somebody else’s success or lack of, we are setting the standard for ourselves that we either need to someday meet that same success or never fall below a certain level of success. If we do, we won’t respect and love ourselves. 

If we judge somebody for how they act, we are setting the standard that we must always act better in order to prevent any feelings of disappointment within ourselves. 

If we judge somebody for how they look, the clothes they wear, or the amount of fat on their body, we are setting the standard that we either need to achieve that in order to be happy, or that we can never let ourselves past a certain point in order to maintain our happiness. 

In every outcome, we are allowing our lives, our happiness, and minds to be shaped by the world around us instead of taking full control of the one life we are blessed enough to live. 

Before You Go

The key isn’t to be perfect. You’re not going to be able to flip off a little switch inside of your mind that’s somehow going to miraculously allow you to stop judging yourself and others around you instantaneously. 

The key is to be aware of your thoughts, to pay attention to the times when you find yourself judging both you and the world around you, and then shifting your thoughts. Instead of finding all that’s wrong with yourself and those around you, try to find all that’s right. Find the beauty in all that is around you, and if you can’t find the beauty, create it so that others can see it. 

Always keep in mind that how you judge others is how you judge your life and that how you judge your life is how you judge others. Be kind to yourself and be kind to the world around you.

Michael Bonnell