90-Day A Better Me Series

Part I: A Journey of Awareness

What Holds Us Back: The Unstable Foundation

Day 19: Being Judgmental is an Act Against Ourselves

“Unconsciousness, dysfunctional egoic behavior, can never be defeated by attacking it. Even if you defeat your opponent, the unconsciousness will simply have moved into you, or the opponent reappears in a new disguise. Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.”

-Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose p. 75

I remember the first time I read the words above almost a decade ago. I’ve heard the message said different ways since the time I was a teenager struggling to survive my own internal hell. For some reason it was the lessons I was going through when I read this that made the message really stick. At the time, I was in a toxic relationship that included so much judgment it had the consistency of toxic sludge. The judgments were just being thrown back and forth and both of us felt like we were under constant attack. I was so drained and exhausted all the time. I was doing the very thing this quote talked about. I was trying to defeat this toxic cycle of communication by attacking it. I was sick and drained because I was acting against the person I wanted to be—The person I knew I was beneath the toxic sludge that had filled me. I remember the moment I decided to stop contributing to the toxic energy of the judgment slinging. I simply refused to engage. This opened a door for me to grow, and my life started shifting in amazing ways.

I wrote earlier in the series about the energy of AGAINST, and I will talk about it more later, but to sum it up we can destroy the most meaningful relationships, causes, communities, groups, and/or organizations by focusing on what we are AGAINST instead of focusing our energy on what we are FOR (what we want). We pick to focus on people’s beliefs that we don’t support and that we judge negatively instead of focusing on what and whom we do support. This leaves us in situations like I mentioned above, feeling drained and beaten down, even trapped. We are just trying not to let that energy win, but by focusing on it, we give it more power. Going back once again to the Law of Attraction and Karma. We are going to get back whatever we put out!

“Be curious, not judgmental.”

-Walt Whitman

We aren’t cosmically, religiously, spiritually, or personally held responsible for other peoples’ actions, reactions, thoughts, or feelings, but we are responsible for our own. We are responsible for how we choose to feel, think, react, and act in any given situation. That is our power! We aren’t victims to the Law of Attraction and Karma—We are active participants. There is no judgment involved in how they work, it is just energy. If we don’t want to be responsible for contributing to the negative energy that judgment puts out, we have to stop participating in it. This includes self-judgment, but that is a box too big to get into here. That has it’s own section in the series.

One of the hardest lessons I learned was watching how I let someone else’s choices, energy, and toxicity affect my life. I let it have power over me to the point where I believed all the hurtful things that were being said about me. I felt worthless and unlovable. I didn’t even see how I let that consume what I was putting out into the world. I thought I was being nice, but I couldn’t fool the energy that was lurking below the surface. I kept attracting more and more negativity. That was the time in my life that I was addicted to gossip magazines and crime shows. I surrounded every inch of my life with judgment. I was convinced that people everywhere were just sitting back judging me. Like I am that important in anyone else’s world, and if I am, that is actually their business because that is where they are choosing to put their thoughts. If it is a positive voice that helps to inspire them, COOL! If I’m the villain in their story, that is their story. It doesn’t have to hurt me, because I know who I am. They can judge me however they want to. I only will react to it if I believe a piece of it is true, or my own self-worth is so low that I worry about them telling someone else and that person will believe I’m this evil villain. I might have mentioned it before, but it’s definitely a good time to mention it again:

 “It’s none of your business what people think about you.”

–My mom

When we get so consumed by self-judgment and the judgment of others we are acting against ourselves. We do get selfish and self-centered doing this. We can get so caught up in our stories that we don’t even see the web we have spun ourselves into. This is not self-care. We tell our story to anyone who will listen and we create stories about people just to keep people listening. By doing this we keep ourselves in the victim role. Then we might get upset if someone else is judging us for our part. It’s a vicious self-defeating cycle.  The only way out is to actively choose not to be there.

Just for Today

If you hear yourself weaving a story of judgment in your head, re-write a different story, write it out on paper if you need to just to break the cycle. No one else is responsible for how we tell our stories. We can create them to be whatever we choose. We just have to remember the Law of Attraction. Make sure your writing your story the way you want to be living your life.

With Love and Gratitude,

Rachael Wolff ©

Did you read today’s companion piece? 90-Day A Better Me Letters Series: Day 19 – Using Judgment to Act Against Myself

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