Why Judging Other People is Good

Do you try to be a good, accepting person? Do you try to avoid judging other people? In fact, maybe you notice when you're judging other people and you try to get yourself to stop. And perhaps as you're trying to get yourself to stop, maybe you even judge yourself for judging other people. If that's something that you deal with, listen to this episode because today we're gonna help you let all of that go. Help you become way more relaxed and comfortable with judgments that happen in your mind and, and ultimately how to use judgment as something that serves you, maybe even serves the other person and actually helps bring you closer to more self acceptance and more confidence. Stay tuned.

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. Helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Azeez.

Yo, what's up? Welcome to today's episode. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz and this is Shrink for the Shy Guy. And if you're a gal, you can listen to. I know we have a few ladies out there, so thanks so much for joining me today. If you want to go deeper into anything that you've learned on this show, go to Shrink for the Shy Guy. All spelled out shrinkforthy guy.com and you can get show notes and other things there. You can also get your free copy of my eBook, Five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. It takes a lot of the stuff that you're learning in this show and systematizes it into a step by step process to help you, as the title would suggest, unleash your confidence so you can become a lot more comfortable in any area, work settings, speaking up, being more bold, approaching people you find attractive and just being generally more confident and badass. Not only that, but in addition to the ebook, I also send you video trainings on each of the steps. So it's a super valuable package, all for free. So go check it out@drinkforthshyguy.com as well as other information about the show. And speaking of that, if you've been listening for a little while and you're benefiting from the show and you think it's awesome, well then you're right. But go to itunes and give it a five star review if it warrants a five star review. If you think it warrants a four star review, then screw you. No, no, it just whatever you think. But give it a good rating and that will help me carry out my mission, which is to reach more people and specifically to reach that One guy, you know that guy who's, like, alone in his room, like, oh, no one must know that I struggle with this. I'm a loser. I'm a failure, because that guy was me. And my mission is to reach me 14 years ago. It's like a weird Terminator 2 travel through time sort of thing, I guess. But, no, I want to help people that are really stuck. And one way to do that is through this podcast. So you can help me help them by giving it a great review. Awesome. Thank you in advance for doing that. And let's talk about judgments, because I had a client conversation. A conversation with a client. There we go. My mouth. My lips are working. I had a conversation with a client the other day about judgments, and I thought, this is fascinating because she was experiencing it. I know. I've gone through this. And I was like, you know, I bet most people struggle with this, especially if you're on the, you know, part of social anxiety or shyness or lower confidence can be. We tend to be nicer people, maybe even too nice. And that's my other mission. I'm actually gonna write a whole book about not being so nice. But maybe you struggle with that. I know I did. And so part of being a nicer person is that you try not to be a judgmental jerk. You try not to judge people. You certainly don't want to share your judgments. And what I found, though, is we're trying not to judge people, and then we end up having a rule in our head that says, you shouldn't judge people. That's bad to judge people. And then you end up judging yourself for judging someone else. Have you ever had that experience? I used to have that all the time. I look at someone, I notice something, and boom, there'd be a judgment in my head. I don't like her voice, or, oh, that guy's annoying, or, oh, look at his shirt, or whatever it is. I'd have some judgment. And then, I mean, the judgment could have been like, three seconds or half a second, and then I could have three minutes of, oh, why am I judging that person? Oh, I'm so this. I'm too judgmental. I'm too superficial. I'm not. Enough of this. I'm too much of that. And guess who I'm judging the hell out of. That's right, Me. So if you've ever been stuck in that trap, stick with me, because we're going to learn how to let that go. And it's super important, because the more relaxed you can be about Having judgments about other people, the more loving you can actually be in kind of a strange paradox sort of way. So first, let's look at, is this something that you deal with? Do you think to yourself, I shouldn't judge other people? And if so, the first question I want to ask you is, well, why not? It's different for everyone. Maybe for you it might have been. Well, you know, I was raised with a certain religious background. I was raised as a Catholic or as a whatever. I guess any religion could have that tenant, right? But maybe a certain particular religion. Where did you learn that it was not okay to judge people? You know, for me, I actually didn't grow up learning that. I mean, when I was in middle school, I learned to be very judgmental because that's what I did to kind of not get made fun of. And then it carried with me to high school where I was like, well, you know, Cobra Kai style from the Karate Kid, right? Like strike hard, strike fast, no mercy. You, you judge people first before they can judge you. That's what I learned in middle school, that's what I did in high school. And I was a pretty cool guy. So I carried it forward into college. Stick with what works. And underneath that, I was very insecure. I was, I was judging other people a bunch because I felt terrible about myself. But I didn't really have any idea that it was bad or wrong. I really enjoyed it, actually. I get together with my best friend Chris and we'd spend hours making fun of people. It was good times. It wasn't until I started to really work on myself and I started to read self help books and I started to work on my own confidence. And then I kind of got into like, I don't know, self helpy, new agey, spiritual kind of stuff. And then it's like, oh, judgment is bad. You don't want to be judging people is, you know, if you're judging someone, it's only because you're secretly judging yourself, right? And I learned all this stuff and somewhere I got, I should be totally loving, totally accepting, totally non judgmental of anyone. That's where I learned that rule. Where did you learn that rule? Was it from family? Was it from religion? Was it from community? Was it later on? Was it from some self help book? Who told you that? And I'm not saying whether you agree with it or not, maybe you think, hey, this is actually a really good thing. I don't want to judge people, great, but just stick with me because we might find a way to kind of soften that. But first question, where did you learn it? So think on that for just one moment. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back right after this.

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Welcome back. You judgmental bastard. How dare you? How dare you judge people. Just unacceptable. Okay, so maybe you thought of where you learned it, maybe not. It's okay if you can't pinpoint it down. That's fine. The purpose is just to start thinking about, you know, this is something that I learned. This is just an idea. This is some belief, and it may be true, it may not be. My experience with it, though, is that it is more extreme than it needs to be. And we tend to beat ourselves up quite a bit. And that's one of my missions, is to help you not beat yourself up so much. So that's why I like to shed light on this topic, because it's an area that, you know, we sneakily can beat ourselves up for. So what happens when you judge someone because you're doing it all the time? I mean, come on, be honest with yourself, right? We're doing it all the time. We just maybe learn not to say it, but we do it a lot. So what happens when you do? Do you beat yourself up for it? Do you try to get yourself not to? How do you try to get yourself? What do you do? You know, this client that I was talking to, the first thing she tells herself is, well, hey, don't be so judgmental. And you don't know all about their perspective. And, you know, if you're judging them, it's secretly because you're judging yourself for this. You know, you don't like the same thing inside of you, so how do you do it? Do you just kind of feel like you're a bad person? There's this general, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad. So you want to uncover what it is for you. And then let's look at this. Let's, like, shed the light of our awareness on judgment. So first of all, what is a judgment of someone or something? Well, it's. You're perceiving some aspect of that person Maybe a physical attribute or a personality quality or whatever. And then there's a sense of aversion inside of you. Like I don't like that. Right. Like I don't like this. So think of someone that annoys you right now or that sometimes does things that annoy you. Look at what's annoying you and pay attention to, okay, it's a specific thing. And then it's a sense of, I don't like that. Good. So that's what a judgment is. And here's the thing. What if judgment wasn't bad? Oh, I know. Blasphemy. How can this. Doesn't he write self help books? How dare he say that? But what if it wasn't bad? What if it was information? So you're. You notice a judgment and then it's providing you information. This actually really transformed for me when I started to see it that way. So the person that really helped me with this actually initially was my wife. So I remember she taught workshops in this community here in Portland, Oregon. And they were called Solsara workshops. They were about authenticity and honesty and taught people how to really communicate and connect with others. It was really good for me, really helped me break through even to the next level of confidence, really shedding social anxiety at some of the deeper layers that I'd really been working on about fully, fully being relaxed in myself. It was really good stuff. And I remember I was connecting more with the community going to these workshops. I started to become an assistant at these workshops. So I was around partly because I had a crush on the teacher. But anyway, she's my wife now. I won. I won. Take that life. But she was teaching these workshops. I was showing up more and more. And I remember there was like any community, there's some people that I really liked and wanted to hang out with more, some people I was kind of neutral on and some people that I was like, I don't really like that person or something about them annoys me. And that's. Now I say that as if it's totally normal. But back then I felt so bad about it. Felt like there was, oh, I shouldn't. Oh, I should like everyone, oh, what's wrong with me? And I remember I was having a conversation with her and I mentioned something about to that effect. And she's kind of like, oh, well, like, like who, who bothers you? And I remember thinking like, what? How, how dare you ask me that? That is. It's bad enough to have the judgments, but I can't share them. That's that's just me. That's a be a bad person. And she encouraged me. And I could tell that she was just curious. And that's what I love about her. She just wants to know the truth is just really curious. So picked a particular person. We'll call her Barbara, although it wasn't her name. And it was like, well, so tell me what bothers you about Barbara? And I was like, man. And it was a lot of, like, filters to work through, but eventually I just said it, and I was like, well, it seems like she'll be sharing something. And she just goes on and on and on and doesn't, like, uses way too many words and doesn't actually say anything that, you know, honest or vulnerable or. It's just kind of annoying. But I just have to sit. I don't want to interrupt because I don't want to be rude. So I just kind of sit there listening and feel trapped. There's the judgment. Dun, dun, dun. But remember, what if judgment isn't bad? So let's look at that for a second. Well, and that's what she did with me. And she's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I've seen that. And I was like, what? It's not terrible for me to have that thought. And what it helped me realize is that we can be annoyed or judged for all kinds of reasons. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's some thing you don't like about yourself or that you're judging about yourself. That's just one reason. There could be dozens of reasons why you judge someone. In fact, the judgment is giving you information. So what information was that judgment giving me about this woman, Barbara? No, you can say, well, that she's annoying or something like that. Well, yeah, that's kind of, you know. But let's dig a little deeper. What information is it giving me? It's giving me information about her, and it's giving me information about me. So what information is it giving me about her? Well, it could be all kinds of things. Maybe she is reluctant to be vulnerable, and so she kind of shields herself.

Right.

So that could be a very accurate perception that is coming out of my judgment. Right.

That.

That sense of annoyance, like, ugh, I don't like what she's doing right now is giving me valuable information that she is doing something that's like, blocking her from other people. It also reveals something about me. What does it reveal about me? No, not that I'm a judgmental prick. Stop that. No, no. What it reveals about me is that I Value being real, being authentic, being direct, being honest. And when someone's not doing that, it agitates me. That's probably why I do the work that I do. And when I coach people one on one in groups, people find that out quick. It's like, let's cut through the top layer, dig way deep and help you faster, more, better. And the only way we're going to do that is by getting really just honest and authentic and real and really looking at it. So I value that. And when someone's not doing that, especially in a setting where that's what we're ostensibly there to do, it was agitating to me. So the question I have for you is how can you use judgments as information? What information can they give you? How can you give yourself more permission to actually just have the judgmental thought and then not turn away from it, but actually go into it? In fact, we're going to get more into how to do that and where to do that and when to use that in your life right after this. Stay tuned.

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Welcome back. So let's talk more about using judgments as information. Here's what I'd like you to think of it as from now on. You might have learned in the past that judgment is this thing that is bad that you need to like. As soon as it happens, you need to put a lid on it. Like you have the judgment and then your mind's like, no, stop that. And you put a lid on it. And what we want to do is we want to start saying, okay, that is actually instead of that box being full of bad stuff, that box is actually full of gold. Let me go in there because there's going to be a ton of valuable information in there. And here is an especially important source of information. So remember I said that a judgment is just something that's an aspect of someone or some situation and then a feeling of Aversion, like, ugh, no. Is it super important to know when you don't like something? Absolutely. So let's say you're having a conversation with someone and you feel this judgment, this sense of aversion. Instead of immediately saying, what's wrong with me? Why am I. I shouldn't be this way. Just breathe and actually notice it. Is it telling you something? Are you done talking to that person? Is their story boring you? Are you not really that interested in the topic at hand? And would you prefer, maybe you don't want to stop talking to them, but maybe you want to talk about something else with them? Maybe you're picking up on something subtle that they do that is off putting to others. You know, if you are, if you kind of think of yourself maybe as dealing with social anxiety or you tend to be more sensitive in that way, here's the thing. You could actually be. You might think that you have lesser social skills or abilities. You actually. What I found across the board as I work with people with social anxiety is they have higher perception than most people. They're more socially aware, they pick up on stuff, they're more sensitive, they're more intuitive, they feel more, they get people more. There just happens to be a lot of fear that you can work through and let go. But you're actually perceiving stuff that a lot of people might not perceive. So for example, I remember this is one person that I know who is. He was dating a friend. My wife and I have a friend and he was dating this woman who's our friend. And I just, the guy just judged the guy. I had so much like, ugh, I don't like this guy. And it wasn't like, oh, I hate him, he's a bad guy. It was just like, oh, go out to dinner with them. Can we just go out to dinner with her? Do we have to go out with both of them? And I had to pay attention to why that was. What is it? So instead of judging myself for judging, which I would have done in the past, here's what I would have done in the past. I would have judged the hell out of myself for it, forced myself to have dinner with them, not really enjoyed it, and then beat myself up afterwards for not enjoying it. Is that something you can relate to? Isn't that just fucking insanity? So let's like let that go. Pay attention to the judgment. So what I did is I got curious. I said, what is it? I was like, well, you know, I noticed that in conversations he is very self promoting. He talks a lot about what he's got going on, how great it is. Next big. Next. The next big thing. This is really awesome. Which is not entirely bad. But then there'd be very little focus on other people like my wife or myself. And then when it did, it was very kind of superficial and short, like, oh, yeah, that sounds really interesting. So anyway, back to my next project. And I was like, wow, he's very focused on establishing his value and his significance in the conversation. And, you know, I actually have a term for it. He's dealing in significance. And that's what some people do. That's a whole nother topic. I could probably have a whole other episode about that because it's super important to get. But being able to perceive that then gave me information. And I was like, well, I'm not really that into that, so I don't know if I really want to hang out with him that much. And so when you feel that judgment, it might be telling you to move away now, either from a person entirely, or maybe there's certain behaviors that someone does that you need to move away from when they do those behaviors. And this is where it gets super important. A lot of nice people who are trying not to judge people end up staying in relationships that are not healthy, tolerating behavior that is not healthy or abusive. And they sort of say, well, I shouldn't judge, and so on and so forth. They have all these reasons. They try to force themselves into it. So you actually want to use the judgment as information, like, hey, I don't like this. And that's kind of good for me to notice that. And good maybe good for me to not like it, because then I can set a boundary and I can go take care of myself. So what we want to do is we want to start paying attention to your judgments. In fact, let's turn this into an action step.

Time for action.

Your action step for this week is to turn your focus onto judgments. Notice when you're judging other people and stop judging yourself for it. Stop assuming that a judgment is bad. Just become really curious about it. You know, sometimes you might find, oh, I'm judging them because I'm actually envious. Yep. And that happens. And make that okay, too. Like, then you don't want to start judging yourself for being envious. Like, oh, I'm such a bad person for being envious. That's normal. Everyone does that. That's okay. It's part of being human. So you want to not judge yourself for what you notice, but maybe it's something about you, but maybe often it's not. Maybe it's just giving you valuable information about how to behave, who you want to move closer to, who you want to move away from, what behaviors you're going to tolerate, what's important to you, what you value. So start paying attention to your judgments and using those as information. That's your action step for this week. Go forth. Put it into action. Let me know how it goes. You can go to shrinkforthshyguy.com send a message through that site, and until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. We'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.