The Art of Not Judging — On Building Sustainable Relationships
A strong conviction of mine which has been reinforced by countless life lessons (some more recent, some a long time ago) is the following realization:
The root of most evil in the world is poor communication.
Poor communication wreaks havoc in any kind of relationship — be it friendship, partnership, business or political. And as in any communication, there is always a sending and a receiving end. While I think clarity and precision can improve the quality of any communication by a lot on the sending end (more on that in another article), let’s focus on the receiving end for today. So:
Is there a way to build more sustainable relationships by changing the way how we are receiving things?
Reception in communication has a lot to do with perception — how we perceive our counterparts. So how do we actually perceive them and why?
Something New
A few months ago, I wanted to try something new. I started a friendship on the basis of one mutually agreed upon general principle: We would not judge each other. This means you accept the persons as they are, you do not evaluate their deeds, give comments or unwanted feedback that might hurt them and most importantly, you do not reassess your friendship on the basis of their deeds or history.
Before explaining the benefits of this approach, let’s go back and see why we usually behave very differently and what the consequences of this behavior can be.
Judging is about Survival
You might ask: But aren’t we judging all the time? I don’t think so. Let’s have a look at what we actually do when we are judging.
Our minds are physically wired to act as pattern detection and evaluation machines: Input: Our surroundings, output: A judgement about the situation: “Is this safe or shall I run?” We detect any entity in our environment and judge whether or not it could be a threat or something different. This is about survival. The more often we judge something as a threat, the safer our life should be. But, every time, we mistake an opportunity for a threat, we might decrease the quality of our life significantly because we deny ourselves the possibility of seeing things differently.
How Boxes seem to make our Life easier
A lot of people say we should “think more outside of the box” or we should “stop putting people in a box with a label on it”. I have never understood the human obsession with “boxes” of any kind, but there is one thing boxes help us do: They provide order, they simplify our lives. Why? Because everything inside a box is not outside, it is in “its place”, it is categorized, it is assessed and and it is stored away safely not to occupy our minds any longer. This is basically the way we keep our apartments clean and tidy which per se is a good thing, right?
Let’s revisit the term of “judgement” and apply boxes again to people — with an extreme example: A criminal who was judged in court and sentenced to go to prison, is then, in a sense, also “stored away safely”, no longer bothering society. But how many persons in our life do we actually “store away safely” in our minds without a “fair process”?
This brings me to the fundamental question:
Based on all what you know about a person — is there even such as thing as a “fair process”?
What “poor” Judgement can lead to
Let’s first have a look at how an “unfair process” can unfold and what is at stake here. An unfair process is one in which we judge without having all the facts or in which we fill the fact gaps with (mostly wrong) assumptions of our own (“poor” judgement). This basically is what a judge or a jury are paid to do.
If you look closely: A lot of those assumptions also work a lot like the boxes I mentioned before: Based on a behavior you saw somewhere else you assume that the person in question acts the same way, potentially out of the same motives — effectively putting that person into yet another box.
Since you can never have all the facts, but sometimes you have to “reach at a verdict” at this point in time, you arrive at a premature “sentence”. This sentence will become as final as death penalty for a criminal (in the extreme example above) if you never allow to revisit and re-evaluate it based on new facts.
The media are taking down politicians ending their careers based on judgement they reinforce and society projects on those politicians. (Let me be clear: I am not talking about the actual cases in court here, but media campaigns engineered to kill reputation.) Some might be fair, others might not. They say “if you throw enough dirt at someone, eventually something will stick”.
Imagine you are not even judging yourself, but you are outsourcing the process to other people in your life like friends or colleagues. Felt “life experience” can make them arrogant, it can blind them, it can blind yourself. Badmouthing and gossip are toxins corroding the very foundation of society. You give in to prejudice (literately judging before you should be judging).
Every time you put another person in a box by judging that person prematurely, you will limit your options regarding that person and your life might be deprived of perspectives, new experiences and, most likely, quality. Your life might also feel safer and easier. However, you are putting the persons on the other side in a very unfavorable position and limit their options, depriving them of quality of life.
With time, your mind tends to reinforce the “sentence”, i.e. that it was the right decision to put that person into that box and that the process was indeed “fair”. But, was it? Ask yourself:
Will you let prejudice decide large parts of your life?
In my personal life, I decided to put a stop to it.
No one said this would be easy, but I think it is the right thing to do.
What happens if you stop judging
So what if you postponed (final) judgement or canceled on judgement altogether? Several great things can happen in a judgment-free relationship of any kind.
Let’s revisit assumptions. One of my personal key learnings about assumptions is this:
You don’t know what you don’t know.
However “life-experienced” you might consider yourself and however creative your mind could be in “filling the gaps of the unknown”, just don’t. Don’t fill them. Avoid “mental auto-correct” (as we all know that auto-correct still sucks — even in the age of AI 🤖😛).
Never ever judge a person based on your assumptions — and if a judgement is required -assuming this is your current task at work or out of any other necessity — you can simply ask about what you do not know. Be like a natural scientist and not like a philosopher on this one. You have a hypothesis, fact-check it, don’t guess. Clarity is king, nothing else.
Now, for the process of judging. Do you really need to judge in this very moment or any other moment at all during the relationship? If you are honest with yourself, you do not need to judge on most occasions. It will not make a (positive) difference most of the time.
If you act like this, you will help to create an open and safe space to basically talk about anything on your mind without the fear of being judged and with no need to justify yourself in front of the other person — which are always major complications in regular relationships and trust me, you are not going to miss them.
Admittedly, our minds that tend to strive for order and tranquility will have a hard time with something that is “outside a box”. And I didn’t say it was easy. I write this article at the risk of being perceived as a hypocrite by some of my readers. Still: This is the right thing to do. It will take mental power, but it is energy spent wisely in your quest for the good life. It is part of the Struggle.
Every time you are not judging, you are accepting the human condition. We all make mistakes and how could you tell that given the same situation and circumstances you wouldn’t have gone for making the same “mistake” you judge other persons for?
It should be a natural consequence and part of your mindset of “always keeping an open mind” and always be open to learn something new about people, society and, frankly, yourself.
But…
Judgement is also quite related to decision making. And if you don’t decide, if you hesitate — especially in the field of leadership — you are considered to be weak. “You are not taking a stand. You are a coward.” Sometimes judgement calls have to be made and have to be made with little time to consider.
Let me be clear here, I am not advocating in favor of stopping judgement altogether in all situations of our daily lives. Some of them really require judgement to be made, even on the basis of unclear facts. In this case, ask yourself two questions:
- Is it really necessary to make a judgement, i.e. should this question be asked at all?
- Can my “judgement call” on this topic be reversed if I am to gather new facts?
It is also fair and desirable to judge if a person demands explicit feedback which involves, your judgement on the situation. (Please always include in that feedback how you reached at the verdict you are giving.)
Conclusion
I hope, I could leave you with some new perspectives and thoughts about judging people. For me it is yet another battle in “taming the lizard” in ourselves (read more in: Why the Struggle begins today, everyday). Sometimes you win those battles, sometimes you lose, but never let the other side (the irrationally emotional/destructive part in you) take the higher ground. Always remain in control.
Looking forward to seeing your thoughts in the comments below! 😌
Never forget: #thestrugglebeginstoday, always be in search for #somethingnew rather than #moreofthesame.
Disclaimer
In the recent years, many book titles have been published with the phrase “The Art of…”. The title of the article is supposed to be both an allusion to those great books, but also a hint that implementing this technique is really not easy and an art even the author himself has not mastered in any sense 😅
(Originally publish on Pulse, on October 11, 2020)
