Fear of Being Judged by Others – Catch and Release

“I think most people have a real fear of being judged by others,” my friend, Lucy Garcia Robles, insightfully observed while attending our Toastmasters speech contest last night. I agreed that at this speech contest I “wanted” to be judged – positively, of course – and win 1st place (which I did).

For me, my “fear of being judged by others” is most acute when I discover myself judging someone else. Would I have the guts to speak my judgement out loud to that person’s face? Absolutely not.

I’m a hypocrite. I’m a hypocrite because I say I don’t like being judged but I judge others ALL the time. And I’m also a recovering judgementalist, as I catch myself judging people’s grammar, mannerisms, clothing, music, car – everything. I’m totally guilty.

I now work toward “catching” myself while I’m making a flash judgement and correcting (“releasing”) myself. I follow up my judgement of another person with a blessing (a “release”). I don’t always catch myself, though, so the person doesn’t always get released with a blessing. But I try and correct myself halfway through the mental punch that I’m wielding at them and redirect it into a mental thumb’s-up.

It ain’t easy. People are rude, loud, slow and arrogant. They listen to crappy music and talk about boring subjects. But who am I to judge. I have my own happiness to cultivate and all the negative judgements that pop into my head just mean I get off track and lose focus. It’d be a lot easier if I just didn’t have negative judgements of others in the first place. One step at a time.

Abraham Lincoln’s quote comes to mind: “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”

So I continue to catch myself in the middle of judging someone and release it into giving them a blessing, a thumbs-up. Which frees me up to get back to work on building my business, writing my next speech and beautifying life’s garden. My goal is to literally bless everything as it comes into contact with my 6 senses.

Until then, “catch and release.”

Image credit: Freds | Dreamstime.com