I’ve been fascinated recently with the concept of Judgment. As I undertake by Certificate in Professional Coaching, I see the importance of letting go of judgment when Coaching. And I also see the many ways Judgement impacts on our lives and how it also ties all the way back to ancient Yogic Texts.

This blog sets out my ramblings on the topic as I understand it today! I hope it triggers some useful reflection.

The first area I had to get my head around was what is Judgment?

Judgment in my humble view is a way our brains sort and classify information. We take in millions of pieces of information from our senses and our brain needs to super quickly sort this information, take a judgment and decide on an action or to file the information. 

In this context Judgment is a vital part of how our brain works. 

If you were about to cross a road, your eyes and ears take in information about the cars on the road, the distance across the road, maybe the brain assesses how tired you are, the weight of the bags you’re carrying. And it uses all that information to tell your body to move forward or to stay put.  So far, so useful.

Let’s consider you walk into a crowded room of people. Your brain will be taking in all the cues and as you start to talk to someone your brain will quickly assess ‘who’ this person is. Our brain judge’s and stereotypes. This can be useful, but it can also be unhelpful, as that first impression or judgment won’t take into account everything about that person which we might actually need to decide if we want to continue to engage with them.

Let’s now consider you’re in the workplace and you’re a manager. It’s your job to manage the performance of the team. You might ask, how can I not use judgment to assess the performance of the team and individual team members? 

Time to bring in the concept of Critiquing. When we critique we compare a situation against an accepted or known standard. It’s an assessment of reality against a set of criteria. This sounds helpful. We often at work would need to critique our own performance or that of a team or others. We want to check we’re meeting the agreed standards. 

But Judgment. Judgment is where we assess reality against our OWN standards/ideas/beliefs. 

Hmm tricky. 

So in the workplace, we may review a team member’s work, we may assess the performance against an agreed set of standards. But then we may also layer over this our own standards and beliefs. 

Let’s take an example.

As a Yoga Teacher the teacher needs to arrive on time to be able to commence the class on time. I’d say that’s a pretty common standard. 

If a teacher arrives 1 minute before the start of class and starts on time, they’ve met the agreed standard, they’d started the class on time. Critiquing - Pass Marks.

Let’s then bring in a nice dose of Judgment. 

So Yoga Teacher A (let’s call her Danni!), likes to arrive 10-15 minutes before class starts, so she has time to set out her mat, get candles and music set up, get into her teaching zone with some breathwork, and think through her theme for the class. 

Danni then observes Yoga Teacher B (let’s call him David) arriving 1 minute before class, go straight to roll out his mat, light the candles, press play on his music and start teaching, exactly on time. 

Danni applies her judgment and deems this a Fail!  Danni could brood on this, be annoyed, let this eat her up inside!

Do you see the problems here?

David is completely following the agreed standards. He starts on time and delivers great classes. There may be perfectly good reasons why he does what he does….. maybe he does his prep in the car or takes some deep breaths to get into his teaching zone outside the studio. Maybe he got delayed on the school run. 

David is happy, his Yogi’s are happy.

This Judgment has served no purpose but to cause pain to Danni. It’s not been helpful. 

And just to clarify; I don’t actually brood or get annoyed about this! But in the past, these types of little things could really have eaten me up. I’d apply judgment and deem something unfair and get stuck in the injustice of it all. Add on some piles of stress and you end up with an unhappy and mean Danni!

We’ve talked here about judging others. Let’s not miss out on that whopper of a topic of self-judgment.

Even in texts as old as the Yoga Sutras which were written between 2nd Century BCE and 2nd Century CE, self-judgment was highlighted as something that caused pain. Patanjali talked about a method to move away from the cycle of suffering, called Abhyasa. Abhyasa is the letting go of the stories of self-judgment by seeing through them. 

By using the tools of Yoga, meditation, pranayama, and asana, we can observe the mind and observe the stories that float through our consciousness. We can observe self-judgment and judgment of others. 

Once we observe Judgment we can take a step back from it, detach from it, and let it float on by. 

It may be we have some work to do, to look at where the judgment has come from; are there underlying beliefs we’re not aware of driving the judgment. 

If I notice I’m in Judgment mode, either of myself or others, I know I’ve got some work to do. I’ll release the judgment in that moment, and then park it aside to dig into later to find where it’s coming from. 99.9% of the time it’s all from me and nothing to do with the other person. (I wanted to write 100%, but wasn’t quite able to!!).

As a Coach and Yoga Teacher it’s vital to release judgment in our work.

I was Coaching a client the other day, and felt judgment bubble up. I was able to see it clearly, and almost chuckled out loud at it’s absurdity, it was all about me! I returned my full presence to my client and the judgment dissipated as quickly as it came. 

When practicing Yoga, self-judgment can creep in. ‘I used to be able to do this?’ ‘My stupid hamstring has got all tight again.’ I take a deep breath and let it go. 

The key to letting go of judgment, is worth. Self-worth or seeing the worth in others. 

If I have self-worth, then I can more easily let go of self-judgment. If I see my own self-worth and the worth in others, then I can let go of judgments about them.

In Coaching and in Teaching Yoga, I believe our clients and yogi’s are experts in their own lives and bodies. Everyone is resourceful and wise, with ability and genius ready to be let loose. They have worth, I have worth, no Judgment needed. 

I hope this has been a helpful ramble, and I will now let go of my self-judgment about it, and publish it!