The judge who lives inside me ...

I’ve been wondering about how I “judge” others and situations lately and have been wanting to clarify what the difference is between “judging” and “discerning” for the arguments in my head.  Webster’s Dictionary has many explanations for “judge” with the meaning that caught my eye being “to form a negative opinion” and the meaning for “discern” as “to understand the difference”.

I’d like to be someone that wants to understand the difference even if my first instinct is to form a negative opinion.

Travis Twomey, Master Certified Coach/SUN Trainer has an acronym for becoming aware of the reality that we are weaving around us that is TWIST which stands for The Way I See Things.  I’m coming to realize that there is reality, yours, and mine and there is also everyone else’s too.  There are facts which are things that occur that everyone sees in their own reality such as a flower coming up out of the ground and then there is the way we see things which means although we may be able to agree that a flower is indeed coming up out of the ground, I may think this is a really super thing while you may think it is marring your beautiful vegetable garden and must be removed immediately!

As much as I would like to believe that I am a very open-minded and open-hearted person, I have to realize that I am limited when I am not able to accept my limitations.  I can be very judgmental and the longer I live in this world the more justified I feel with my judgments because I have had many experiences to authorize my necessity to judge.  What I am learning is that my world opens up so much more when I am willing to be discerning about whatever it is I am judging and to look at the situation, person or thing with a “different pair of eyes”.  This enables me to understand the difference between what my original opinion was and then allows me to open up to other meanings from my own.

In October of this year, I will be joining many friends from around the globe that attended boarding school with me during our teenage years for our thirtieth reunion.  As you can imagine this activity in itself is a veritable cornucopia of opportunities to throw on my judge’s gown.  We’ve got an email list going with names of people that I have not thought of (or seen or heard) in years.  At first the emails were tentative and sporadic back and forth but lately they seem to have put on steam with quips and jokes flying back and forth.  I’m amazed at how I remember the personality of someone so long ago as it comes through loud and clear as if from a zip file, to open up into a multi-dimensional memory.

I know that I have evolved into someone that I am glad to be after many years of trial and error and yet evidently some of the core personality traits of who I am today were evident to my friends back then. This could be a good thing and it could also be something that automatically puts a big orange sticker on my forehead saying, “warning”.  I want to remember this realization as I come to know others so that even though there may be some very familiar behaviors from who they were back then, there has also been thirty years of evolution available to them as well.  Perhaps the inside furnishings for their behavior have changed.  I know mine have.

It’s been a humbling experience for me to realize that this is our THIRTIETH High School Reunion.  When I remember being 18, I know that back then I was barely able to understand someone being 30, much less entertain the concept of students’ celebrating their thirtieth reunion. 

I must confess that I have sat back at our tenth, fifteenth, twentieth, and twenty-fifth reunions and looked with judgment at our elders celebrating their thirtieth, fortieth, etc. High School Reunion.  We were THE best class, after all. I really couldn't imagine why anyone would want to keep coming back year after year because of a shared history from such a long time ago. Yet, now when I return to the campus and walk around I realize that we have now become the ghosts of the school halls’ past and are camouflaged by the parents of present students.  We walk in the invisible dimension of sharing memories as we see each other and reunite; this is our experience to enjoy even if others wonder about how our group of “grey hairs” could be so enthusiastic about seeing each other.

Today I’m interested in getting to know the people that graduated before me and want to hear their experiences and understand their perspective of a place we shared at different times.  I’ve also had the opportunity to meet the son of a friend who was attending the boarding school recently and to see it from his perspective; this was fun too! Getting to know people before and after I graduated, along with becoming reacquainted with the people I shared history with helps me to broaden the way I see things about the world.  Maybe now instead of seeing things in black and white, I can add some color.

Learning to recognize my judgments and wanting to be able to discern seems like such a small step for me to do when there are wars being fought, glaciers melting and global warming imminent.  Yet, doesn’t it all need to start with ourselves first before we can possibly be of any help from a broader perspective?  A great master once said that one of the most important things we can do is to first become aware of our negative thoughts and to heal them, change them, evolve them, while they are still just a thought---before the actions follow.

Maybe paying attention to the judge inside of us and becoming willing to see things from another perspective or two is one way we can begin.  Do you know the judge that lives inside of you?

Coach Lynn Kindler offers Professional Life Coaching for individuals and groups wanting to actively engage in conscious choices for their lives and work. She is a graduate of Coach University, an Associate Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and has obtained certification from SUN (Success Unlimited Network™). Lynn is also a member of ICF. Lynn is currently pursuing her credentialing for the next level of certification through ICF (PCC-Professional Certified Coach and MCC-Master Certified Coach).

Her forte is helping clients discover their life purpose so that they can live their lives “on purpose.” She also coaches high profile people who want to define a successful life in their own terms. Coach Lynn leads self-care retreats in the state of Texas that combine Spiritual growth along with Career and Personal Success.