subject: Intuitive Coaching and Judging Others: Impaired Judgment Can Impair Lives [print this page] Intuitive Coaching and Judging Others: Impaired Judgment Can Impair Lives
Judging others not only clouds your understanding of a situation, it can get you into trouble. How do you know if you're judging someone else? Simply put, if you think you're better than the other person then you are judging them against you, and you are likely to be wrong. This form of impaired judgment can impair lives simply to give you the satisfaction of criticism. In my intuitive coaching sessions, I try to instill this dose of reality into my clients.I finished my workout at my health club the other evening and as I was collecting my things in the locker room I overheard two women talking about a girl who faked her kidnapping to get out of a marriage. It was all over the newspapers at the time. These women were very angry at the girl and appalled at how she had hurt her parents. They were trashing this person in the locker room. They were identifying with the parents and the pain these people were feeling. They said, "How could she hurt her parents that way? What kind of person is she?" All over the country people were criticizing this girl for what she did without knowing the circumstances. They may have been right or they may have been misjudging her. The point is, they didn't know. Misjudging others is a common human trait in that we like to think that we would never do such a thing so why should she? This form of impaired judgment - judging others without knowing all the facts - is very common. Now, I'm not saying that what she did was correct, rational or appropriate. Obviously, there were many other alternatives to get out of the marriage. But, I began to think about it. Why did she plan this elaborate scheme instead of telling her parents? She went to a lot of trouble to get out of this and took the risk of destroying her entire life. Think about it? Why would a teenager - someone who doesn't quite have a handle on life - go to this kind of trouble? I'm thinking there's a good chance she did tell her parents. Perhaps, they wouldn't listen to her. I don't know. Perhaps, they threatened her. Whatever, I don't know what happened and it isn't my place to judge this girl - or her parents or the husband. And I make sure that clients who have received my intuitive coaching approach this subject the same way I did, by simply not judging.When you are judging others you prevent yourselves from seeing the truth of the situation. You separate yourself from others and make you out to be better than they are. You are essentially saying, "If I was this girl, I would have just told my parents." How do you know that? How do you know she didn't? You don't know what it's like to be the girl, and you don't know what kind of pressure and suffering she was experiencing. It's her life you're looking at, not yours.Judgment appears to be a learned experience. How many of you have seen a toddler judging another? "Look at that baby. He's ugly. I hate his shirt. Doesn't he know not to put his hand in the toilet?" No, we didn't judge others when we were small. We pick up opinions and beliefs from those around us - from others in our environment. It is learned behavior.It is inherent that in judging others, we often misjudge them. Impaired judgment misses the essential understanding that this person may bring to our lives, and we even make mistakes that could make us look like fools, or worse, get us into trouble. Don't you be like that!
