Video Summary:

You’ve probably experienced both sides of judgment: judging others and being judged. Today I want to focus on us judging others. Judgment, in the context of this video, is projecting something that you're not able to accept about yourself or the world onto a person, situation, or group of people.

Most of you watching this video probably notice times when you judge other people. And cool for you, that's not an easy thing to accept in yourself. You're owning something you likely do not see as compassionate or spiritual. You may be saying, “Wow. I just judged the hell out of that person. Not cool.”

But to me, that's only going halfway. It's really hard to resolve it at that level. Have you ever tried to just stop judging people? It's really hard, if not impossible. In order to resolve judgment, you have to consider, “Why am I judging this other person or group of people? What is the cause of the judgment?”

Once you understand the why, you can heal that thing in yourself, and then the judgment kind of falls away and resolves itself. And, it's an opportunity to learn something about yourself. You can own it, work with it, and heal that thing in yourself that created the judgment.

Probably the most common way we judge others is when we take something we cannot accept about ourselves and then project it onto another person. We might say, “That person is so selfish!” Perhaps I have a spiritual belief that it's not okay to be selfish and am therefore unable to accept that I'm selfish.

The way to resolve this is to bring it back home to you. Hearing yourself say or think, “That person is so selfish, is an indicator that maybe there's something in you that has an issue with being selfish. Even though you worked on it, maybe you have some residual selfishness that you can own in yourself.

Another variation is when the person we’re judging reminds us of someone that's mistreated us. This is almost more like a trigger in unresolved trauma. You see the person as your perpetrator, your father, or your ex. This provides the opportunity to bring it back home to yourself so you can heal the trauma.

Another way is when someone acts in a way that exemplifies something that you're not allowing yourself. Maybe they’re in love and fully enjoying life, and you judge them because it's showing you something that you’re not allowing yourself. Bringing it home allows you to create room for it in your life.

The last variety I want to talk about today is when a person is doing something that you believe is not okay to do. This often happens when we don't make peace with and decide upon our personal ethics. When we're not clear on our ethics and beliefs, there's a tendency to project them onto other people.