Weekend Australian columnist Ruth Ostrow offered a riff on advice and judgment this week. It’s a touchy topic, especially amongst parents with young children. Push a stroller into a busy supermarket or shopping mall and it won’t be too long before a complete stranger offers you some unsolicited words of wisdom about how to care for your child.
In her column, Ruth Ostrow was mostly talking about the kind of advice that comes out of nowhere from a friend or a relative. The kind of advice that includes uninvited opinion, snide remarks and disdainful stares.
It’s an aspect of human behavior that is loaded with cultural nuances. If you’ve got an Anglo background, the best thing you can do with advice is button it. Families from Mediterranean and Jewish cultures, on the other hand, might consider you a bit of an ice maiden if you didn’t want to hear their views on your parenting, hairstyle, husband, nose job – or offer your own in return.
There’s a world of difference between criticism and observation. But regardless of how a comment is intended, its capacity to hurt depends entirely on the recipient. Whether you intended to wound or not, you may have launched a barb that will draw blood.
If you find yourself being critical of other people, chances are that you are also your own fiercest critic. If you are intensely critical of other people, it can also be a subtle way of feeling better about yourself.
Mindfulness and judgment don’t mix. Master of mindfulness Jon Zabatt-Zinn describes mindfulness as ‘paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to whatever is arising inwardly and outwardly.’ It’s that ability to observe rather than judge that I am striving for; when I hear the critics pipe up in my head, I know it’s time to get some distance.
Here are a few practical ways to cancel out judgment in your day.
- Press ‘pause’ when you would normally get angry or judge someone. Instead of reacting negatively, imagine yourself pressing a ‘pause’ button on the back of your hand and make yourself hold off for a few minutes.
- A similar exercise is to picture a big dimmer switch in your mind that turns your emotions on and off. Now see yourself turning your emotions right down, leaving just your capacity to observe. With your emotions out of the way, simply notice the people around you: how they walk, what their faces show, what their hands do.
- If the talk over coffee or at the school gate turns to put-downs today, excuse yourself and walk away, or change the subject and take the conversation somewhere that is not damaging.
- Instead of judging people, play armchair shrink. Ask yourself how their actions reveal their character. Scrutinise the dynamics of the relationships around you. Speculating about why they do certain things rather than dwelling on what they do will help to short circuit your critical drive.
- If prayer is part of your day, add these words: ‘God, teach me not to look for love, but to be ready to hand it out at all times. Show me what it means not to judge other people, even when I feel like they’re finding me wanting.’
