Hi guys! Welcome to the 84th episode of the “Wildly Successful Lifestyle” podcast!
Thank you for letting me hang with you today! I love knowing that we connect. If you love this episode can you give us a 5 star rating and maybe share it if you feel inspired. OK now…..
I write every single day in my journal that one of the things I want most in the world is to love without judgment. I don’t want to try to feel better about myself by judging someone else. I want to see them as God sees them, God, the universe, whatever you believe in…that’s how I want to see people.
I want to love people and not care about what I perceive as their flaws. Notice I said what I perceive….because just because I think something a flaw, it does not make it a flaw. Just because you believe something about another person, does not make it true.
Our judgments of others do not reflect that other person, it reflects our life experience. In fact, It has nothing at all to do with the other person and everything to do with us. Now thoughts have energy so our actual thoughts can affect us and the other person, but we will talk about that in a minute.
My grandfather was a really wonderful man. I love him so much and miss him dearly. He passed away at 92, as he got older his filter became non-existent much to our sometimes embarrassment. He would say things that maybe we might be thinking but would never say out loud because it would hurt someone’s feelings. We were at a restaurant with him one time and this waitress with a beautiful soul was taking our order. My grandfather thinking he would help her told her that her being obese is just not good for her health. I tried to crawl under the table but it didn’t work because it was a booth and there were too many of us sitting there to fit underneath. But this sweet dear lady just looked at him and said “Mr. MacDiarmid, now that wasn’t a very nice thing to say.” I kind of love that response because it put the hurt out there for us all to see including my grandfather. He was a little taken back but shook his head yes, in acknowledgement that what she said was true. Now most of us are not out there speaking every thought like that thank goodness, and he had dementia at that point, so I want to make sure you don’t think too harshly of him. My grandmother was also a precious beautiful soul. She would tell us growing up though that you can never be too skinny. Or she would say “Watch your weight dear”. This was just normal to us and I really never thought much about it. But you see it did sort of shape the way I view being overweight and I never gave any thought to it until I became aware of my thoughts.
When I see someone that is very overweight, Rather than judge immediately, I have started asking myself what I love about them. Perfect strangers, I ask myself what I would love about that person if I knew them. Some of the things I come up with: Their family adores them. I bet he works so hard to put food on the table or maybe he is someone’s beloved brother or father, sister or mother. I have started changing my habit patterns of the way I see that person. It isn’t perfect and I still fail at it but You can see how we interpret the world through our past experience. This is universal. We all do it. Our thoughts have energy. Our thoughts affect us and they affect those around us as well. You can change your relationship with someone simply by changing your thoughts about them. Studies have shown that just walking by someone thinking negative thoughts affects you, imagine if you lived with someone that was constantly negative or that constantly had negative thoughts? Even unconscious negative thoughts about another person will affect your relationship with them.
So being aware of your unconscious belief is the first step and creating a new belief is the second step.
And look, we all have these thoughts, just becoming aware of them can make it better. The reason it came to the surface recently is because in my journal I ask myself every single day what it is that I want. When you ask yourself what you want long enough, eventually you will see what is most important to you if you are really allowing yourself to be real. Ultimately something that kept coming up is “I want to love without judgment”. Some make it easy for that to happen, others maybe it’s a little harder but ultimately you can change your thoughts about another person and therefore your relationship with them without them doing anything differently.
The older I get the more I realize that the key to not judging is self love. The more you love yourself, the more you will search for the good in others as well.
My challenge to you this week, because as I’m recording this it is Thanksgiving week and we may be seeing family we haven’t seen in a while and we all know that can be stressful. But this week work on noticing subtle negative thoughts you have about someone else and as soon as you do replace it with 3 things you love about them or three things that make you grateful for them. If it’s a stranger make something up about them that is nice…. Not only will you notice you are happier but my guess is you’ll notice your relationships will feel better as well. I love you guys and I’ll talk to you in a few days.
