Three ways of working toward being non-judgmental

By Dr. Gabriella Kőrösi

I believe that most people would like to be non-judgmental toward others. Sometimes this can be difficult in the day to day basis, when there are many things happen throughout the day, big and small that can be irritating. It can be easier to judge, critic or blame others when we are tired, irritated and have a lot of other things going on in our lives. A great example in our lives currently is relating to the COVID -19 Pandemic and the Delta variant spike. Many people have their own believes about wearing masks or not wearing them as well as being vaccinated or not. Other things include people’s belief in various things like politics, religion, race, and gender issues just to name a few. To help with some of these issues there are three simple ways we can work toward being non-judgmental.

1. Check in with your intention. In any situation it is good to check in with our intention. Some questions to ask ourselves are: Do we have a good intention walking into a certain situation? Is the topic important enough to get into a heated discussion about it? Do we care what the other person thinks or just want to state our opinion? It is always good to figure out if we are trying to make the situation about us when it is maybe about something entirely different. Are we even need to be in that situation? Is this happening at work? At home? With friends? We all have baggage from the past and have to be aware that previous experiences might make us jump into conclusions, judgment quicker. Is this situation going to matter 5 or 10 years from now? Is anybody will be at harm because of whatever is going on?

2. Listening. As always listening to another person and really trying to understand whatever is going on from their point of view can be helpful for us to work toward being non- judgmental. It is easy to jump in and try to discuss our point of view especially when we have a strong opinion and feeling about a topic. Listening can be difficult for humans just in general. For whatever reason we like to jump in and present our opinion in on an issue the middle of someone else’s sentence. It takes patience to listen to other people and truly try to understand what they are trying to tell us about a topic. Today society is also very fast paced, and it can be hard to slow down or stop to listen to someone. One common example is in the morning when someone asks: How or you or how was your weekend and they walk away before we can even answer. It is…