What? Shocking title, huh? Good.

Now that I’ve got your attention- here’s the story and it’s follow up teaching point…

I was walking down the street in the city today. A man was walking on the sidewalk, coming towards me from the opposite direction. He was wearing a tan top hat, long brown fur coat, bright yellow pants, and flashy button-down shirt. I actually smiled at him (and at myself)… eventually.

When I first saw him coming, my immediate thought was ‘pimp’. My immediate next thought was: judgment. “Look at me… there I go judging again” (which interestingly enough, at the start of this month I set an intention to be mindful of my judgments and let them go as best I can). Guess what the final thought was in these instantaneous seconds?

“You know what… maybe he just loves wearing that long fur coat. Good for him. He’s comfortable being himself.”

Really. No joke. I let go of my judging thoughts and then, as he and I were passing side-by-side, I smiled at him.

Funny thing happened next- a man walking faster than I was, came up and passed me on my right-hand shoulder. As he walked by, he said: “I think you’d look better in that coat than he does.”

“Thank you” I said. And then I felt puzzled. Did that mean he thought I was a very nice looking pimp too?

What the Heck!?!?! There you go judging again. Gosh, I was pissed off at myself now. I had let the judgment go, was overjoyed that this man just enjoyed wearing his coat and that was that. And then- I did it again. Oh boy…

OK- so what’s the point?

Think about it. What are you judging on a daily basis? How do you judge and criticize yourself and others? In what ways do your thoughts, words and/or actions judge things and/or people in your world?

This past month, I was blessed to hear a speech by a prominent figure in diversity and inclusion. The part of his talk that struck me the most was when he flashed a title on the screen. After the title, he asked us to picture in our mind’s eye what that person in that role would look like.

For example, he’d say ‘surgeon’. Then he asked us to picture what a surgeon might look like. When we had, he placed some images, the ones that came up on top of the Google image search, on the screen of the typical ‘surgeon’. It was terribly interesting (and eye-opening) to see how the image in my own mind’s eye matched the perception of the stereotypical image of that role.

We all live our lives through our own unique perception. No single person on this planet holds the same thoughts in their heads. You can show a group of people one image that is distorted and the group may never agree on what the picture ‘actually is’. Our perceptions can become one of two things for us: our greatest asset or our biggest downfall.

The first step we all need to take is to practice awareness. Actually become aware of our thoughts. Once we are aware of what is going on inside of our heads… we can do something about it, if we choose. And yes, sometimes when we ‘wake up’ and become ‘aware’ we realize our thoughts may not be picture-perfect. That’s OK. It’s actually totally normal.

As you can see from the above example, mine aren’t perfect either. I’m still working on this just as you may choose to. Awareness is a wonderful gift. It is a tool we can use to shift our thinking. Once aware, we can choose to do something about our thoughts. We can choose to let go of negativity. We can choose optimism; choose confidence; choose joy.

I continue to work on this and will maintain my intention of the month- let go of judgment. I may not be perfect, and I’m doing the best I can…

I’d love to hear from you! What would you say about judging thoughts? Are you aware of them and if so, how do you let them go? What helps you choose empowering and uplifting thoughts? What helps you appreciate everything (and everyone) with an open mind? Leave a comment below and thanks for reading.