Ep 4: How to Break the Chains of Judgment

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Internationally recognized speaker, coach, and trainer, Reg Malhotra, will teach you tools to improve your mindset, change your behaviors, and let your relationships thrive. Are you ready to unlock the power of your mind? Here’s your host, Reg.

Reg Malhotra:     Alright, welcome back to another episode of the Neuro Masters Show, my name’s Reg Malhotra and I am the CEO founder and lead trainer at Neuro Masters Academy.

Today, I want to talk to you about a very, very common problem, a common issue, and a very major area for almost everybody. And that is the area of judgment.

So, how do I stop judging others? Or how do I stop being subject to others’ judgments? How do I deal with others’ judgments?

I’m sure you all can relate to this because we’ve all been there or are in that spot still. A lot of us can live a life paralyzed in a way due to the fear of being judged; the fear of being judged for the way we are, perhaps or some action we take or something we don’t do, or some behavior we have, or the way we look, or the way we come across, or what people might say, what people might think.

All these things plague people from any country in any part of the world. And the reality is for you to be able to move towards your life of choice and to move towards a way of living that you are proud of, that you are happy with, is going to require you to have a formula, a strategy, or a skillset if you will, to deal with this fear of being judged.

And I want to talk about this today because living in fear of judgment is one of the biggest factors for people to remain stuck, for people to remain unseen, for people to not take action towards their goals, for people to even give up on themselves and live their entire life just saving themselves from judgment. This is how strong this can be for a lot of people.

In fact, there’s so many things that people will not do even though they want to do them because of the fear of being judged. There’re dreams that people will not follow, will not create because of the fear of being judged.

This is the extent to which people can give away their power to others and live in constant fear and really, what people are doing is avoiding getting rejected, avoiding feeling hurt, avoiding being in some form of pain as a result of others.

And this develops from our early years really, in the way we are raised many times, in the family or environment structure that we are in, it could be a result of what happens at school where other kids may look at us and laugh about something or they might make some comments, and we start feeling these experiencing certain emotions. And these emotions can feel so strong in our body.

And we grow up to be adults and then we could be spending our whole life. All we could be doing is preventing and avoiding situations that could have even a remote chance of being judged or even feeling judged.

Now, a related aspect to that is our judgment on others. There’s a very strong link. So, listen up carefully; I want you to consider who and what you have judged in your life, even in some cases repeatedly.

What behaviors, attributes, looks, ideas, things that people do, things they don’t do; what do you commonly find yourself placing judgments upon? Having narratives about? Feeling negative emotions about?

There in lies some of the answers for you in relation to your fear of being judged. The things we judge others for are typically things that we are absolutely petrified of being judged about. Isn’t that interesting?

We judge people, we place judgments upon people sometimes with a lot of emotion and by the way, the more the emotion, the more we are going to get fear being judged about.

In fact, I can tell after meeting somebody, if they are placing judgments on something or someone, I know they’re giving me a pretty clear idea of what is perhaps in them, what they have done in their life in the past.

So, audit yourself on that as you listen to this. What is it that really irritates you? What is that really annoys you in another person? Is it someone in your life? What really puts you in negative states?

Anytime you think about it, you see them, or you see a behavior, you find yourself in a very triggered state. Because if that’s happening for you, that means it’s possible that that behavior is something that you have expressed, you have displayed in some way, and you haven’t found it easy to own that in yourself.

So, there is a big connection between what you judge in others and what you fear being judged for. And it’s interesting how the less you judge others, the less you will fear judgment of others, because if you want to create a life of your dreams, if you want to create an exciting life, a life that you’re proud of, then you are going to have to get on the path of letting go of judgments.

And I mean, not even in your head, not even thinking through them. And a lot of the times, it requires some deeper inner work to let go of these judgments, and in a lot of cases, people are to let go of them by making conscious choices to do so.

So, you want to start with who are you judging? What for? How long has it been? And are those attributes in you? Or have they been in you? Did you do them in the past and haven’t owned up to it even to your yourself? Or is it that if you were in the same situation as the other person, you would end up doing that particular behavior or showing that attribute? So, that’s the first place you want to start.

Second, you want to think about what are the key fears you have from a judgment point of view. What do you truly fear being judged about?

And when you think of that, think back into your life as to where this possibly could have set in from. What could have happened in your life that gave you this deep fear of being judged for these things.

What is it? Is it a time when you were put down, maybe you were embarrassed, maybe you were let down, maybe you felt a lot of emotion because someone said something to you in the presence of other people?

What is it for you? I know for me, I had a lot of fears of judgment. I had the fear of being judged for the way I look, the way I sounded, even the clothes that I wore. Being judged for not having a certain skillset.

We go through this in our lives, but I think it’s important to start the process of letting go because just because it happened in the past doesn’t mean we need to spend our lives saving ourselves from another experience because this could be severely limiting.

I can tell you, if you’re going to do anything significant in your life, anything substantial in your life, then you possibly are going to get some attention. And along with that, you possibly will be judged. There’s always people who are going to apply judgments. Do they always mean harm to you? Sometimes not, it’s just what people do.

But for you, as someone who is growing yourself, someone who’s on the path of self-expansion, this is an area you’re going to need to master, you’re going to need to learn more about, you’re going to have to let go of what happened in the past so that you can reach more states of neutrality so that you can become more self-aware.

You can become aware of what’s triggering you, where is this judgment coming from of others? And where is this fear of judgment coming from? What are you not doing as a result of this fear of judgment?

And you may also want to consider what’s the worst thing that would happen. Sometimes a lot of our fears are in fact irrational. We fear these things would happen and they don’t actually happen.

But we run these stories in our heads, we run these images in our head, and we start living these things even though they haven’t happened. So, you ought to really, really have a good look at this.

And if I was you, I’d want to start looking at what am I judging other people for, and how can I stop that immediately. How can I change my behavior? How can I have more acceptance for where people are at?

One of the greatest journeys you can undertake is understanding and accepting that people have different models of the world. Everyone carries different thought structures, different experiences, different memories, and that makes them who they are today.

So, we ought to deeply understand that people have different models of the world and become a student of understanding why people do what they do. Not everything they say is even directed at you.

Not everything has an intention of harming you, but our brains are wired to protect us, to make us survive, and anything that comes through in that way, if that gives rise to an emotion, could seem like a threat.

So, the best thing you can do is get on the path of achieving neutrality, asking yourself, “Is this really about me? Does this person really intend to harm me? Is this judgment on me going to have a lifelong impact on me, on my results?”

Because if it’s not, you’re best to let go of it, see it for what it is, remind yourself that this is coming from their model of the world, which could be very different to yours. And you cannot just change a person’s model of the world overnight, you have to do some inner work to get there.

So, my message to you today is this fear of judgment, it’s like a disease, it’s slowly eating up your dreams, it’s eating up your desires, your goals, and it’s eating into everything that you can be, everything that you can create, and everything that you can bring to this world, but because of this fear of judgment, you can end up remaining, stuck, unfulfilled, and being at the effect of others, giving your personal power away to others.

I know for me, the journey of letting go of the fear of judgment was one of the greatest journeys because I know when I got to the other end, it made a significant difference to how I was able to show up, how I was able to help other people, how I was able to truly step into my purpose and live a life of passion, of intention, of excitement. And I wish this upon everybody. The idea of judgment is crippling, and it is not healthy.

So, let’s make this pact that you are going to start on the journey of identifying who you’re judging, identifying what you fear being judged for. And by the way, you might see some similarities.

And one of the things you want to avoid is judging people that you don’t even know very well. A lot of people spend a lot of energy, a lot of time judging public figures.

Now, here’s the funny thing; if you judge someone, if you place conclusive judgements in particular about someone, then that person may in fact have some other characteristics that you may need in your life.

And if you have judged them, you are unlikely to adopt even some of the other characteristics that you may need to move towards your goals.

Think about that. Does that give you enough importance for you to want to let go of judgments? Because as we judge these people, we keep creating more basis for us to never adopt or never reflect any of the other characteristics that the person might have that you may in fact need. This was a very, very profound realization for me.

So, going on the journey of accepting people for who they are, for where they are, understanding that people have different models of the world and just letting it go and getting back on your path is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself.

I hope you are going to get on that path immediately. I hope you’re going to take what you’ve heard today and start applying it into your lives immediately. I promise you, you will see immediate differences both in how you think, feel, and behave, and also, in your own progress in life.

I wish that for everybody. I want you to write to me or ask me any questions you have around this. I’m more than open to share with you about my experiences working with thousands of people.

If you like this topic, let me know so I can have more episodes around this, but I look forward to seeing you. Thank you for listening today, I look forward to putting out another episode very soon. Thank you.

Thank you for tuning in today. Are you ready to take the next step and find out what’s keeping you from reaching your goals and creating the life you want? Go to go.neuromastersacademy.com/gs-lp for a free transformational mini-workshop with Reg.

See you next week.