Meditative Monday Series: Mental Clearing for 2019 – Week 3
Practicing Non-Judgment
In last weeks Blog Post at https://telebehavioralwellness.com/clearing-out-brain-fog-week-2/, I shared some day to day strategies on how to cleanse our mind, body, and spirit by adopting a more anti-inflammatory diet, and requested that you commit to orchestrating your day to set aside time for yourself. Also, I asked that you begin considering your implementation of a meditative practice, and I suggested resources to assist you with developing a consistent #journaling practice. This third week we will learn how to #practicenonjudgement, and why it has a role and is important in helping us with the mental clearing process in our lives.
As I have previously shared, there are a number of states of mind and human conditions at work in our lives that are keeping us stuck and not moving forward towards living our best lives. If your goal is to #bethebestyou, then the place to begin is with a lifestyle paradigm shift which will always begin and start in the form of pursuing a mental clearing. Practicing non-judgment is just another one of those “first steps” to working through the process. So, why practice non-judgment? The practicing of non-judgment is important for a number of health reasons for which we can benefit by its mastery in our lives. For one, we can’t center, focus, or maintain a connection with our source energy without it.
Energy is essential to our brain functioning at an optimal level. When we judge, we tap into the precious resource of positive energy that our brain naturally makes available to us. In fact, when we judge something as positive we focus our attention towards pursuing the “good” of what we are judging. Conversely, when deciding to expend energy towards judging something as negative or less than, we find ourselves going away, or fleeing from what we’ve now adjudged as “bad”. It should be noted that when we use our energy for judging something, we negate and ignore the possibility of there being a “neutral” perspective, which is a consideration that undoubtedly would more effortlessly have us utilize less brain energy and more focused.
Judgment is “Ego Driven” and is a primary reaction to thoughts, situations, or people that cause our Ego to feel challenged and/or threatened. While measuring is part of our human experience, drop the judgment every now and then if for no other reason than to see what it’s like to take a step back and relax our mind. We should continuously be mindful and remind ourselves that everyone has a combination of gifts to offer that no one else has. As such we should respect everyone’s scars because everyone has a story, and you are no exception, so do you! It is part of universal truth and part of our human existence that we all hold close to our chest some uncomfortable perceived, real, or imagined wound or blemish that we likely may still carry inside of us. Yet, it is more useful to be mindful that “no one” is the center of the universe and that the world doesn’t revolve around our expectations of shoulds, must, and have to’s, not even ourselves. Instead, going forward if we distance ourselves away from that type of self-centeredness than we won’t have any reason to be frustrated over the judgment we may be reacting to anymore. Instead, demonstrate your value for diversity with your humanity. Regardless of what our comparisons lead us to think that we’re better or worse than someone else, in either case, it’s simply not healthy and doesn’t serve us to remain “all up in our heads”. Instead, practice trying to avoid comparisons. Let us not be confused between the distinction between judgment and assessment. When we size up something in a neutral way that is an assessment, as opposed to making a comparison which is judgment. What about opinions? Opinions are not judgments merely personal feelings on an issue or situation of the moment that may shift, especially when we have new facts. However, when we hold a view as being the “only” truth than you’ve stumbled into a state of judgment.
Practicing mindfulness keeps us in moment-to-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surroundings. Being unaware does not serve us because in the case of judgment when we judge we typically slip into a state of unawareness which allows our judgments to begin the emotional cycle of influencing our behavior as part of a cycle of conditioning where we trap ourselves into a cycle of judgments and reactions. From a mental health perspective, it has been found in one study that the participants who rated highest on nonjudgmental scales also had lower levels of depression, anxiety, and stress-related symptoms. While another study found a connection between the effects of on anxiety, judgment bias and emotion regulation on self-image. Whoops! There it is, it’s back… EGO?
To have greater mental wellness a better and healthier use of our brain energy would be to change our mindset towards acceptance and pay greater attention to our thoughts and feelings without judgments. In other words, not to allow our mind to get caught up with the notion of a right or wrong way to think or feel in a given moment, rather to plug into and focus our attention on what we are sensing at the present moment instead of allowing your past thoughts, feelings, or attitudes to impact your belief system in the present, or begin influencing your perceptions of an imagined future. In this mode of consciousness, practicing non-judgment can help us to regulate our emotions, decrease our emotional reactivity, and increase our cognitive focus.
By carving out a path of purge through practicing non-judgment we are doing a mental cleanse. We begin to experience and realize a mental clearing in our psyche and working in our lives as we tune out distractions. We will discover as a result that our ability to focus is heightened, we will notice an improvement in our memory and attention skills, and are far more likely to recall more information as our ability to make that mental shift from chronic habitual judging to practicing non-judgment guides our perspectives of our worldview. And, as this mindset shift takes hold we make a mental and emotional shift in how we characterize the people, places, and things in our lives.
A Few Tips For Practicing Non-Judgment:
- Value what you bring to the party. You are unique, own it!
- Don’t compare yourself to anyone, not for any reason.
- Beware of the “Mask”. Refuse to live outside of who you really are. You are not your role.
- Respect diversity. Allow yourself to be sensitized and energized by differences.
Process Exercise:
Practice Non-Judgment
- For this task use the “Rubberband Method” of awareness by placing and wearing a rubber band on your wrist daily before you leave the house. Everytime you either out loud or in your head find that your judging either yourself or someone negatively, “POP” yourself. It’s a technique borrowed from the concept of “Though-Stopping”. Do this for some short specified time period of your choosing, i.e. ½ day to start, build up to a day, then a week, a month, and beyond until you’ve extinguished judgment mindfully from your life.
- As you go through you your non-judgment practice, daily jot down in your journal why you think you felt the need to characterize the thoughts, words, or deeds pertaining to the objects of judgment to fit your opinion of how these things somehow should be different. This process exercise allows you to bring awareness to it and brings awareness into how it is that your conscious mind crosses over from the subconscious to the conscious.
A Useful Audio Resource:
10 Minute Guided POSITIVE Meditation – Release Blame & Judgment- Anxiety, Fear, Worry, Overthinking (Tiffany Love) https://youtu.be/vstgNZSp5qw
#meditativemonday #mindsetshift #mindsetiseverything #lifeonpurpose #purposefulliving #balance #worklifebalance #workhardplayhard #liveyourdreams #livingthedream #selfcare #selflove #loveyourself #mindfulness #guidedmeditation #bethebestyou #transformational #transformationalcoaching #wellnesscoaching #wellness #wellnesslifestyle #mindsetcoaching #telebehavioralwellness #bhfyp
** TeleBehavioral Wellness/Myself, Dr. China will not be held responsible in any way for the information that you request or receive through or on our website, Social Media Accounts i.e. Instagram, Facebook, blog, e-mails, etc., or programs, services and/or products. In no event will we be liable to any party for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, equitable or consequential damages for any use of or reliance on this website or blog, e-mails, programs, services, and/or products, including, without limitation, any lost profits, personal or business interruptions, personal injuries, accidents, misapplication of information or any other loss, malady, disease or difficulty, or otherwise, even if we are expressly advised of the possibility of such damages or difficulties. By entering our website/social media accounts, you are agreeing to accept all parts of this disclaimer. Thus, if you do not agree to the disclaimer below, STOP now, and do not use our website, social media accounts, blog, e-mails, programs, services, or products. By using social media mediums, or any of our programs, services, or products, you implicitly signify your agreement to all parts of the above disclaimer.