I am sitting in my favourite restaurant ? and eating burgers !but there seems to be a small problem with my mind-
I just hate the guy who stood at the billing counter. He never used to smile ?. I feel that people never come here again because the salesperson simply refused to smile.
The burger went inside slowly but why is my mind making so many motion pictures? There were only questions now
Why does the shop owner keep him?
He looks rough maybe he is not fit to be in the front of this shop?
Was the burger speaking through me?
What was I doing?, I was merely judging him.
One day I ordered a huge burger and a large bowl of ice-cream?, only when I put my hand inside my pants, I found out that I forgot my wallet. I felt very embarrassed and looked like a jerk.
I was thinking about how to cancel my order.
I looked at the guy and told him to cancel the order, and my mind was about to create movies of embarrassment, but suddenly something different happened-
The guy whom I judged for no reason spoke the words
“I know you come here most days, you can pay me tomorrow! its ok, it happens sometimes!”
Now the burger looked really small in comparison to my opened mouth!
I was a fool to judge him! But he was not worth my poor judgement.
Many things in our life happen like this! We are very quick to judge but very slow to understand the people around us.
Husband judges the wife and wife judge the husband for things that never happened or is never going to happen.
Father judges the son and the son judge the father when there is nothing worthwhile to judge.
Subordinates and bosses, all keep judging one another when the motion pictures directed by their minds never become a reality.
We keep judging on and on when there is no truth to our judgments but we still keep going on and on till the end of our lives. We are trained to keep judging, but we never learn the skill to look beyond our judgement.
Like our imaginary fears and clouded depressions, most of our judgments are never accurate. We are just victims of our various biases that we have picked up during our journey of life.
Confirmation bias confirms to our existing beliefs.we should remember that our opinions may not always be rational. The real truth may be completely different.
Halo Effect indicates our foolish impressions determine the person’s character. Ex: A successful person will always have a pleasant personality. Now can you understand why you voted for the wrong person!
Self-Serving Bias: The most significant tendency to blame God when bad things happen and to appreciate ourselves when good things happen.
Attention Bias: We pay attention to the exterior things when really ignoring the important internal things.Example: judgement based on skin colour and the way people dress. We are so addicted to our attention biases…
Actor-Observer bias: we attribute our high cholesterol level to genetics and not on being a couch potato and Netflix addict.
Anchoring Bias: We learn very little about something and argue that we know all about that!.
False-consensus effect: We overestimate our own potential when we hear more claps! we need to understand that there will be someone to clap even if we post nonsense(sorry Facebook ?and Instagram! ?)
After all the biases and the distractions, what do I really see when I judge?
all my judgments about others merely reflect my insecurities and my unmet demands that I wanted to have.
I see my incompetence when I judge my boss
I see freedom and love when I judge my kid
I see desirability and the feeling of being loved when I judge my wife
I see money, fame and value for power when I judge a politician
All my judgments are nothing but my desirability and loss of things that I miss in the journey of my life. There are ego and envy in all our decisions.
So what am I to do?
Our minds are naturally inclined to the negative.
Our ancestors always looked for situations and relied on judgments for their own safety and to feel a sense of belonging to their tribes. We have come a long way from our reptilian brain.
We cannot change much, but if we try, we can look for the good things in every person we meet.
We can practice stopping the procedure of judging.
It will take time, but we can slowly start our journey of happiness. It is worth taking baby steps towards this beautiful trip.