Using Your Judgment... or Not

I wrote this post because a friend of mine recently posted a link on Facebook to a piece that had run in the Los Angeles Times. The Times article discussed how the issue of racial profiling was once again coming to light following the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in Massachusetts.

This started me thinking about why people make judgments. Not only against African Americans, but against any other race, culture, nationality or sexuality that is different from their own.

What is it that makes us react this way toward other human beings? The Chinese philosopher Confucius said “By nature men are alike. Through practice they have become far apart.”

It is our nature as human beings to judge everything that we see, hear, smell and touch. We do this every second of every day. The human brain constantly processes information, involuntarily, and makes decisions (judgments) about the information received. “I don’t like the way this tastes” is just as much a judgment as “I don’t like the way he looks.”

Our minds are programmed with information from the time we are born. We learn from our families, our friends, our societies and our own experiences. Many of these influences have made subconscious impressions on our minds and may have been passed down through generations of our family. These ideas that are imprinted on our subconscious may not have any applicability to our current life circumstance – yet they remain there, part of the filtering system that influences our thoughts, likes and dislikes.

It is impossible to turn off this part of your mind. But that doesn’t mean that you have to listen to it. Just because you think it, doesn’t make it true.

Think of your brain as a computer. It is constantly processing information and filtering data. However, the quality of the outcome (the millions of thoughts racing across your consciousness) is totally dependent on the quality of the programming (all of the information that you’ve been exposed to your entire life, including the opinions of other people, the media, childhood experiences, inherited beliefs). The end result? Sometimes your thoughts are wrong.

Remember that your thoughts are not who you are. Just because a thought passes through your mind doesn’t mean that’s how you really feel. The key is not reacting to negative thoughts. Stop and acknowledge that it was just a thought and nothing more.

So while you can’t control your thoughts, you can control your emotions and your reactions. Most people have it backward. They believe they can control what they think, but that they have no control over their emotions. Emotions and actions together form a reaction to the thoughts that you are having. You can choose to react or not to react.

The thoughts running through your brain constantly all day are not who you are – they are not you. They are your brain computing and processing information in accordance with what’s been programmed into it. Who you are is the being that responds to those thoughts. You can’t control every thought that goes through your mind but you can control your emotions and your actions and the way that you respond to your thoughts.

It’s not reasonable to expect yourself to completely stop having judgmental thoughts, or to never again have a single negative thought. It’s simply not possible. But it is possible to control the way that you respond to those thoughts.

When you have a thought that you don’t like, you have two options. If you are in a situation that you have time to examine where the thought came from (such as when you are meditating) then you can analyze and perhaps eventually stop having that thought because you are able to resolve the issues that caused the thought to arise. But, most often, in your day to day life when you have a thought you don’t like, you need to first acknowledge it “okay, I had that thought and I don’t like it,” and then dismiss it “I don’t need that thought, it doesn’t serve me.” Move on. Don’t waste time feeling guilty, that gives the thought power over you. Simply forget about it.