Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
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Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
How Judgement of Yourself and Others Destroys Your Peace
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We explore how judgment forms in the mind, why it mirrors self-criticism, and how to replace condemnation with preference and focus. A warm river morning and a playful otter help us see how appreciation differs from the heavy habit of comparison.
• perception, evaluation, comparison, condemnation as the judgment sequence
• self-judgment and judging others rising and falling together
• projection as exporting inner criticism for a brief rush of superiority
• artists and designers as a case study in creative comparison
• sympathy versus pity and how comparison hides in concern
• discipline as focus rather than punishment or insult
• the unnecessary next step and choosing preference over resistance
• media incentives to provoke judgment and how to opt out
• practical interrupts for the habit loop and feeling the emotional cost
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We are on the line.
SPEAKER_01:Here. A cloudy morning, but warm out there.
SPEAKER_02:Is it warm?
SPEAKER_01:It's warm up. Well, winter warm. Oh, like I didn't find it. I didn't I didn't put on sunscreen or anything. It was it was relative to winter mornings. It was a warm one. I wore a coat, but uh it's not so bad out there. Things are melting a little bit. The river's wide open. The sun is really up. I don't we'll probably see some otters and muskrats again. That's fun.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that otter the other day was at least I think we came to the conclusion it was an otter based on internet pictures and looking at it. It was a big one. And it just kept there, there was like three different holes across the river in front of us, and he just kept going down into one and then popping up and out of the other, coming up on the ice and down into another, you know, and going around.
SPEAKER_01:It's cute. Isn't it amazing how we can appreciate an otter just doing what it does, being itself? It wasn't doing anything unusual. We have no judgment of that otter. No, we're not saying, oh, that otter should be getting some food. That otter should have some friends with it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. What's wrong with that otter?
SPEAKER_01:What's wrong with that otter playing in the ice like that? Doesn't it have a job? It's amazing how an otter is just being itself and we take joy from that.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Just from it being itself.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's a different set of expectations. That's a different thought pattern. You know, when the heron comes and lands on our dock, right? It's just being a heron.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I really don't know what the heck it's doing. Resting, thinking. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Do herons think?
SPEAKER_02:I'm sure they do.
SPEAKER_01:In their own way. But you don't judge the heron. Now the geese, on the other hand, I judge.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. They poop everywhere.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting. Yeah. Judgment. It's so darn silly. And it is just something we naturally do. Where do you think that comes from?
SPEAKER_02:Childhood. Everything comes from. Yeah, I think I think I think it's very natural to judge. I think it's part of the human condition. I don't know if that's the right way of saying it, but I think it it takes a real choice in movement in the mind to not judge. I think you know, uh judgment can start very young. The easiest thing that comes to me is someone saying, Why did you do that? And then just saying to yourself, why did I do that? Oh, I'm stupid. I'm uh, you know, I'm I'm this, I'm that. And then that just starts a ball rolling. And then as we get older, well, then we start to judge others. And I truly believe that if we think of a bar graph with two bars, and one is judgment of others, and one is judgment of self, those those bar graphs, that bar graph moves together up and down, right? So if we are highly judging ourselves, chances are we're high highly judging others. And the less we judge others, the less we judge ourselves. So they move up and down together.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we hold we hold people to the same standards that we hold ourselves. And sometimes that's enlightenment. Sometimes it's enlightening to realize how hard you are on other people in terms of your judgments, and then realizing that that's what's going on inside you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What is the process of judgment? What is the act of judgment?
SPEAKER_02:What do you mean at like a thought level?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, what's the thought pattern? What's the thought sequence?
SPEAKER_02:Just looking out into the world. Um, if you're judging others, judging anything. Judging anything. I guess it's a pattern of well, I wouldn't do that, so why are they doing it? Or that's not my preference, so why is it their preference?
SPEAKER_01:So first you perceive something, then you evaluate it. Comparison, then you compare it to what others might have done or you might have done or what you think is better, because it's really easy to put yourself in somebody else's place and say, I would be better than them. It's really hard to be in their place and try to make a different choice. So there's a comparison, there is an evaluation, there's there's a condemnation. And that's an interesting part of it. Like we don't ever judge things as wonderful. That doesn't really feel like judgment. That's just appreciation. That's just openness, right? You know, watching the otter. I don't think we were judging the otter. I don't think we were ever prepared to say, what a dumb otter. Right? Yeah, we were always just in a state of wonder and appreciation.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So judgment is really just always negative, and it's a kind of a condemnation.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it very much reflects what's going on inside ourselves. And if we're being hard on ourselves, we're probably going to be hard on others.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it makes it really easy to look at others and call them bad.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I see it. Uh the the coming coming from the art world in a way, I see it in the art world all all the time. Artists judging other artists' art. And now it's not always like this, but I feel like if you're highly critical of your own art, what I've seen anyway is is artists looking out there and going, oh my gosh, look at that art. That's that's terrible. I don't, you know, like they use three colors, like what's wrong with them? You know, it maybe it's minimalist or and they just they just can't understand why another artist would want to do that kind of art. And in that, and hearing that from artists over the over the years is like you you can make the assumption probably that they're really hard on their art. Otherwise, they wouldn't be out there criticizing other people's art, you know? And if you're you know, I can it can go, it can represent so many things, like feeling maybe like you work harder on your art or you take longer, or you think that the other person is not working as hard. Why are they able to sell their painting for a thousand dollars more than you when their painting is minimal and not full of color and movement? You know, like I think if that artist was, you know, really good in themselves, like really good with themselves and their process and their art and wasn't criticizing themselves all the time. Yeah, I see it with designers and artists all the time. In that, but I I think if they were good with their own being and with their own art, they wouldn't look out into the world and and and feel almost, it's almost like they feel attacked a little bit. Like this person's doing better, why are they doing better? Right? The perception of doing better, maybe they're not, but anyway, that's that's the easiest one that comes to me because I come from that world or a king, you know, I was in that world and I noticed it a lot. Always, always critical of other artists and designers.
SPEAKER_01:I think of judgment like projection.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, we judge others the way we judge ourselves, and I think that that's that is the process of projection, that psychological idea where we put on others what's really going on inside ourselves. It's a really great way to get rid of negative feelings, right? If you are judging yourself negatively, and I think for so many people, that's that's the primary issue, the primary issue, dissatisfaction with themselves in one way or another.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Which isn't, oh, I want to do better or I can do better. It's boy, I'm bad. And then when we're carrying that around, right, our natural tendency is to look at others and compare. Right? Am I doing better than that one? Yeah, at least I'm doing better than that one. Yeah, he's a real goof. Right? I'm just a goof sometimes. Yeah, it's a it's a projection outward of an inward state, and it's a way of getting it out of ourselves, using that comparison.
SPEAKER_02:Is feeling bad for someone a judgment?
SPEAKER_01:I think it can be. I think there can be times when our sympathy is much more about ourselves than it is about the other. I think sometimes sympathy comes from a very genuine place, maybe past experience, maybe being aware of the kind of emotions attached to a situation, yeah. And feeling compelled to offer love to the situation. And I think sometimes sympathy can be kind of false because it isn't love. It is judgment. It's oh, I feel so sorry for you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, in the chat it says pity. Pity is a judgment, I think. Comparison versus pity.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that's that's the magic word right now for that one. Comparison. And that's that's the effort that it takes, right? Judgment takes a lot of effort, it happens quickly because we're so darn practiced at it, but it takes a lot of effort, takes a lot of evaluation, takes a lot of measurements, takes a lot of comparing. And I think that that is enlightening because it tells us that our judgment is a mental habit. It's not natural. It's natural to look at a million things and just acknowledge that they are.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right? I can look at the bird feeder out there and I don't have to judge it. It's just a bird feeder.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right. In that process, I just let it be. I went out to take the garbage out this morning and the weather was warmer than I expected, right? But it just was. I wasn't gonna judge it. I was gonna I maybe notice it out of contrast, but it wasn't something to be judged. You know, everything just is situations, conditions, they just are.
SPEAKER_02:Do you think we only judge in relation to our comfortability and preference? So, like you could have judged the weather if you were uncomfortable with it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I would have to create a whole construct in my mind, wouldn't I? Like that somehow weather is being done to me.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And somehow weather is should be different. Somehow, my it's not meeting my expectations. But that again, that's just such more reflective of my own dissatisfaction with myself and my life that I just naturally start judging even the weather.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:No, being hard on ourselves is another one of those mental habits that we've been raised with, thinking that that is a good thing. We call it discipline.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But real discipline is just focus. Real discipline is just the ability to hold your attention on whatever it is and not be distracted by the conditions or our responses to it. You think of exercise, you know, yesterday we had to do 20 box jumps onto a box. And with every box jump, I'm reacting to them. Right. And it's just my internal conditions that make it hard or easy. And I automatically think if it's hard, it's bad. When really, if it's hard when I'm exercising, that's good. And so judgment becomes a distraction. And my discipline then is stay focused on the task. Difficult or easy, fun or not fun, stay focused on the task, stay with it. That's discipline. It doesn't require me to say, less you lazy bum, get off your duff, jump, jump higher. Come on, you can do this faster. Come on. Right? It doesn't require me telling myself that somehow I'm not good enough or I need to be better.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Judgment is insidious. Is it that's a good word for it? It's insidious. It sneaks in, it sneaks in and it takes an absolute nothing situation and makes it bad. Right. To use your example of the artist going into an art gallery, they could go in and just appreciate, just like, whoa, look at this art everywhere. Right. Or they can go in the art gallery and get engaged in comparison and judgment.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, this is better than that. And that's not as good as his other work. You know, she really blew this one.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:When the other gallery, she has one and I like it better.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, judgment, uh I what I when I work with clients, I use the phrase judgment is the unnecessary next step. Judgment is taking something that you prefer or don't prefer. And then rather than just allowing it to be and moving on to what you do prefer. You know, like some people might not like otters, but they might love the swans.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:And so they look out there and there's the otter, and yeah, it's just an otter. And then they look and they say, Oh, there's the swan. And then that gets their attention. That doesn't mean you have to say that otter. You know, what a scourge to the world the otters are. Oh, everything would be good if it wasn't for the otters, right? That's it's just not necessary. It's not necessary to go that, it's not necessary to take that next step. What's sufficient for your own pursuit of happiness is to say, uh, I don't prefer that. I prefer this. Uh, you know, yeah. You might say cherry ice cream is not good ice cream, not the ice cream I want.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But you don't have to say it's disgusting.
SPEAKER_02:All right. I get it.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's just the approach, the unnecessary next step. And we and it takes effort, and that's the funny thing, right? The funny thing is it takes a lot of evaluation, it takes a lot of effort, and we do it anyway, because the easier thing to do will be to just let things be without my interacting with it at all. I don't need to evaluate one bit.
SPEAKER_02:Do you think I think I know the answer to this, but do you think there's a whole element of peacefulness that can come into your life when you stop doing that? Because I feel like judgment gets emotions going, right? I'm not as good as that as that. Oh, I feel bad. Oh, I'm angry. Why are they doing that? What's wrong with them? What's wrong with me? It just stirs up so much that's not peaceful.
SPEAKER_00:I think you did have the answer to that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think I answered it for you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that we need to realize ourselves that our judgment is what takes away our happiness. You know, there's there is no such thing as judgment external to me. And I can certainly experience other people's judgment and ignore it. You know, I can watch other people get completely engaged in judgment and the the typical kind of anger and depression that results from it. Somehow this is bad, and that makes it unfair to me. This shouldn't happen, right? That's often part of the judgment. This should not be happening. They should not be doing that. You can stop with the preference, you can just stop there and say, I don't like that. I'm not gonna spend time looking at that, thinking about that, spending time with that. I'm not gonna approve of that, I'm never gonna do that myself. That's the contrast showing itself to you and you taking advantage of that contrast and learning.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But we get a little bit of a boon, we get a little bit of excitement when we can take some of the unhappiness we have with ourselves and throw it on somebody else. And that's that internal judgment, external judgment. I might not be very happy with myself, I might be confused with myself, I might have spent a lot of time judging myself. And so when I get the opportunity to point my finger, it's almost like I take a little piece of that negative energy that I have directed towards myself and I direct it outwards, and I feel a certain amount of relief. I mean, the judgment of others results often in kind of a false puffery inside ourselves, right? When we go on a rant and we talk about that stupid idiot, and it might be somebody driving the way you don't like, it might be somebody at the mall behaving the way you don't like, it might be a politician or a group of people, right? But there's there's this energetic kind of puffiness we get. It makes us big, it makes us righteous, that righteous feeling, which is way better than self-judgment. And self-judgment is guilt. Self-judgment is shame. And these are really hard negative energies that you're directing at yourself. And again, it takes energy, takes comparison, takes analysis, takes a negative force of condemnation. It's not that it's easy to do, it's that we're just in the habit of doing it, and we get a bit of a payoff. And the payoff is we get that self. Righteousness. We get that sense of superiority.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it doesn't stay.
SPEAKER_02:No, it's only like a nanosecond.
SPEAKER_01:It often quickly reverts to, well, who the hell are you to judge? We'll turn that one on ourselves. Who am I to be condemning them? Right. We turn that into, oh, but you're not perfect, Les. There's nothing perfect about you, Les. Right? We we we puff up and then we deflate again.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right back to where we were, dwelling in that judgment, self-judgment, guilt, shame, condemnation of ourselves, focused on our failures, which isn't even a real thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Focused on our inadequacies, which are just points that we're spending time learning. It's an unnecessary next step because it does require analysis and energy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I think everywhere you look, you know, news, TV, you could almost always ask yourself, who are they trying to make me judge? Myself or others? Advertisements, usually yourself, news, others. I think about how we've a little bit gotten got sucked into the news recently.
SPEAKER_00:And there's a lot to be sucked into.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:All around the world.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. But I was fascinated last night. If you want to cry a little and and and look at something beautiful, there's these monks walking from Texas to DC right now. And in my it just showed up in my feed, and I I was just all consumed with it. Huge crowds walking with them. And it's just really moving to look at and watch. And you just pray that they're kept safe along the way, looked after. I mean, talk about non-judgment from them, from them, right? Walking across. They're hoping to just their presence be peaceful and and compassion and loving kindness to the world. I don't even know where I was going with that. So oh yeah. So what stood out to me was I thought this was brand new because I just saw it. I've been so consumed for the last couple of months, really, and world stuff. I try to keep out of it, but it's easy to get sucked in sometimes. But I thought, oh wow, they're just starting out. I can't wait to be part of this journey. Out of a 120-day journey, they're on day 80. Okay. So, like, why isn't the news showing that? You know, it's I I only see it, I've only seen it on freaking TikTok of all places, right? And so I had to go searching on YouTube for some videos of it, and it's barely shown. It's shown on some offbeat channels in the states, you know. Anyway, so that's just a little nice thing to look up if you want to see something nice.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm I'm uh for better or worse, I'm confident that there are those out there who are judging that as bad.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, I've heard that. Yeah, Instagram has quite a bit, apparently, too.
SPEAKER_01:So looking at what judgment is, when we stand over the ice cream counter and there's 32 flavors, we find our preference and we don't need to condemn all the other non-choices. We don't need to suggest that they shouldn't exist.
SPEAKER_02:Well, maybe similar.
SPEAKER_01:Once I saw my dad order rum raisin ice cream, and I thought, what the heck? And at that point, I realized why they had the tub of rum raisin ice cream in the in the freezer. Because from time to time there are people who say that's what I would prefer right now. And the act of judgment is resistance to what is. And it's an application of energy that could be applied elsewhere, it could be applied towards your preference. You could just as easily take all that energy you're using to explain why you judge that thing to simply moving away from it and towards what you want. And then there's none of the negative emotion. And because that judgment is very much like a mirror, right? Whatever I send out, it comes back at me. Whatever comes from me goes to that. All I'm doing when I'm judging is reinforcing really my own, uh I'm creating a legitimacy for my own self-criticism. Resisting what is is pointless. Putting out what you want instead is an honest attempt. So those monks, I don't think that they're walking down the street carrying their political party card. I don't think they're walking down the street saying the president is bad. No, I think they're walking down the street saying my preference is peaceful awareness that things can be different. And I want to offer my peaceful presence and suggest that things could be different. And I'm going to demonstrate the peace that I think we could be having right now. And as a result, thousands and thousands of people are drawn to them because of their preference is peace. There's so many people, and I think it really is the vast majority. The vast majority of people would rather just keep their eyes off this. The vast majority of people just wish we wouldn't be engaged in such activities. The vast majority of people just want peace, just want calmness, just want a content, happy life. They don't see the need for all of this bustle that's going on around the world. If people would just kind of leave each other alone and do their best for themselves, yeah. Let's just talk a minute about using judgment against yourself, just a little bit, because that's you know, it's easy for us to observe others judging the world at large and see that as not good, not helpful, not useful. And in that, see judgment as, you know, judge judgment. Hey, we're gonna judge judgment. Judgment is bad. And I I don't want us to judge judgment, yeah. And I don't want us to judge our own habits of judgment, and I don't want us to judge the fact that we prefer one thing over another. I want us to see how judgment happens and how we use it against ourselves, and that's how we use it against the world.
SPEAKER_02:I think we try to judge ourselves in order to get ahead, but this is the perception of it, ahead of anyone else judging us. If I like you've said in the past, if I judge myself first, then yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I keep God from judging me, and I keep others from judging me, and that really is about punishment. Punishment's a silly idea, isn't it? Punishment is like imposing this backward idea of discipline. Punishment contains judgment, it contains condemnation, it contains criticism, it contains superiority, takes a lot of energy. It really requires that we hold back love.
SPEAKER_02:So, what do we do?
SPEAKER_01:I think, like everything that as hypnotists, we approach the mind as a habitual thing. Mental actions are habits.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And we acknowledge that we've developed a habit of judging, and we develop an awareness that the extent and level and type of judgments we impose on others are really the same that we impose on ourselves. And then we examine the effect of judgment. Judgment is paralyzing, judgment is hurtful, judgment is projection and a little tiny moment of superiority that it doesn't help anything, whether we do it to ourselves or we do it to others. It's not helpful, it's not improving anything, it's not making anything better. In fact, generally speaking, it just makes it worse. Because now those with opposing judgments now see you as someone that they have to oppose. And really, you know, that's that's the beginning of war. So in recognizing all of that, which I think is the first step, is understanding what's going on inside us and seeing it as a habit, knowing that a habit is created by repetition, then we ask, what do I want? I want the opposite of that. And the opposite of that is not taking that unnecessary next step.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:The opposite of that is not resisting what is, simply allowing it. And where it's not what you prefer, move away, engage something else.
SPEAKER_02:And I think too before we wrap up here, I think it's important to notice if you have judgmental thoughts, let's say on our yourself, right? I think it's important to notice. Do you have a feeling after you judge yourself? Do you have to have an emotion? Because I think we're so good and quick at judging ourselves that we don't stop to notice how it makes us feel to judge ourselves. And I can almost guarantee you that it doesn't feel good.
SPEAKER_01:Guilt and shame.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I think that recognition that it doesn't feel good is a first, one of many, I'm sure, first steps to starting down the path of releasing judgment on yourself. Saying to yourself, no, I I don't want that, right? I don't want that.
SPEAKER_01:Being aware that this is not helping.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, this is not helping. Not judging yourself and saying, Oh fuck, I'm judging myself. Stop judging yourself. You're so stupid for judging yourself. Don't don't keep like looping it, but just stop it in its tracks. Try your best. Stop it in its tracks.
SPEAKER_01:And see it as the act of accepting what is.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I accept that this exists and I move it towards my preference. I prefer not to feel this way. I prefer not to think these things about myself.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I prefer that I don't behave that way. I prefer that I don't react that way. And I guess I need to work with that, but I did. I do sometimes. And it's not a reason to think badly of myself.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. That's a first step. Any questions? No, no questions.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's really that process of breaking down something that has become so habitual. And do your best to see the sequence of thoughts and try to intervene in that process.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, thank you for hanging out, and we'll see you later.
