Judgment vs. Non-Judgment

Aren't your judgments there to serve you? How's that worked out so far?

Throughout these articles, I’ll mention exercising non-judgment. It’s applications are so vast you learn over time that it’s nearly applicable to every thought you think. But first, it’s important we dive into what I think judgment actually is, and why it’s there. Humans have been around for a long time. The majority of our history was a constant struggle to survive. Throughout this period, we developed certain imperatives, you could say, to ensure our survival. Among these includes the practical necessity of judging something as a threat in order to protect ourselves. As you can imagine, many other humans, especially those who didn’t look, talk, act, or dress like us actually were threats. Different social groups were often threats. Essentially humans had to protect themselves against anything they didn’t understand. Today, we still have these judgments of others and situations and they most often result in a negative bias.[1] As some evolutionary psychologists say:

You can take the person out of the Stone Age, not the Stone Age out of the person.

Often, this bias is enhanced in alcoholics and addicts who come from a culture that is already inherently negative. This bias may have even served us in navigating the culture of drinking and using. You must, as an alcoholic or addict trying to recover, understand you aren’t going to be navigating that culture any longer - and the negative judgment of nearly everything and everyone will hurt you. So while I think everyone needs to understand why they judge people situations so quickly, it’s especially important for the alcoholics or addict trying to recover.

We can dislike people without knowing anything about them whatsoever. We “just don’t like them”. You’ve had those moments. Sometimes these people become our best friends, we just don’t pay attention to how wrong we were in our initial “assessment” often because it’s basically unconscious. Of course, you can point to how many times your gut was right about some dude who ended up fucking you over. But remember, if it’s when you were drinking and getting high then I don’t really care. We won’t be around people like that anymore anyway, right? If it’s when you were living a good life surrounded by good people then your point has merit. In any event, our initial assessment of most things absolutely are never right 100%.

Here’s the thing, if you don’t pay attention to the way you are judging a person or a situation then its difficult to understand that you are feeling the affects of that judgment. You know, when your boss is being an asshole for no reason and that makes you start imagining him firing you and you react with anxiety. Or when you call your dopeman twelve times and he doesn’t answer, you start thinking he will never answer, and somehow your withdrawal intensifies. Twenty minutes later he shoots you a text: head over in 15 min. I know you know that feeling, your withdrawal diminishes. Yet you don’t take these lessons in life and learn you don’t know shit to the point where you will remind yourself you don’t. Don’t you see how much more nonchalant successful people are in their initial judgments of situations? They recognize they need more information so that they don’t react emotionally. They are talking to themselves. That mental chatter going on upstairs? That’s what creates your life. This process of non-judgment is making sure that chatter is at least somewhat logical.

I’m sure if you’ve been in recovery any significant amount of time you’ve heard the story of the Chinese farmer right? If not, it goes a little something like this:

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One day, a long time ago, there was a farmer. The only thing this farmer cared about in the world was his horse and his son. One day his horse ran away. All the villagers approached him:

“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, how will you support your family?” Some said

“You thought only having one horse was bad, now you have nothing to help you farm, this is the worst thing that has ever happened to you.” Others said.

“I dont know” said the farmer. “It could be the worst thing thats ever happened to me, we will have to wait and see.”

A few days later, the horse came trotting back. To the farmers surprise, fifty other wild horses were following it. The farmer and his son got them all together in their pen and shut the gate. Again, all the villagers approached the farmer:

“Forget what we said the other day, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to you” said the villagers.

“I dont know” said the farmer. “It could be the best thing that’s ever happened to me, we will have to wait and see.”

The next day, the farmer’s son was trying to train some of the wild horses and ended up getting trampled. Both his legs were broken. He would be crippled forever. Again, the villagers approached the farmer:

“Your son, he’s crippled and will never be able to carry on the family name or farm” said the villagers. “ He’s the only family you have, now this, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.

The farmer again replied, “I don’t know, it could be the worst thing to ever happen to me, I dont know, we will see”

The next day the Chinese Army came through town and recruited every young able bodied man to fight in a battle in which they all died. They didn’t take the farmer’s son.

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And that’s the story. I know it kind of ends abruptly but the point is very clear: stop judging situations so quickly as they happen. You don’t know what a situation, positive or negative, may lead to. Don’t be quick to think the farmer isn’t having any emotional reactions to these situations. Of course, the farmer was worried when his horse ran away. He was ecstatic when he multiplied his wealth by fifty. And he was terrified when his son was trampled. He is human after all. The farmer knows, however, that his emotional reactions aren’t helping his cause so he’s not too quick to judge a situation without letting it play out.

Judgments are not the thoughts that go through your head. Judgment is acting according to those thoughts.

We need to become aware, like the farmer was, that our emotional reactions are charged by the uncertainties of life. If he knew at the time his horse was going to bring back fifty friends he would have been excited for him to run away. If he knew his son being trampled would be the very reason he didn’t die in battle - he wouldn’t see that event as so negative when it happened. If I knew that moving to Arkansas meant I would have the life I have today I wouldn’t have been so upset I was in Arkansas in the first place. Reflect on how often your judgments are wrong.

All us of have emotional reactions to upsetting events. The problem with addicts is that all of us have a program of acting when we become emotional as well. My life has gotten a hundred times better just by reminded myself to be calm when I’m emotional. Often, we make decisions in times we judge as “bad” when in reality that emotion could have come and passed leaving us better off to handle future emotions.

Life for people who are not judging every situation as it comes:

As you can see, when a “good event” happens things get better. Maybe you got a new job, but you didn’t let the extra money destroy you. You kept up your initial positive relationship with money even though you earned a raise.

“Bad events” happen all the time. You may have lost your job, but instead of getting high or drinking you didn’t judge the situation and make it worse then it already was. Inevitably, you find more work - even maybe a better job!

This isn’t to say that situations don’t force us to pivot in many cases. Often, we have to react to losing a job, a relationship, or a financial hardship. What we don’t want to do is react emotionally.

Here is what it looks like when we judge a situation and act according to that judgment:

As you can see, a “good event” happens and things feel a little better. Then something bad happens and we react emotionally making it far worse. Over time, we struggle to reach any normal baseline where we feel okay. Our life seems to feel like a roller coaster.

The problem with reacting according to our initial judgment of a situation or person is the fact that we are almost always wrong:

• That person didn’t mean to come across that way. They are reacting to life as well; struggling with their own problems, insecurities, and incorrect assumptions.

• You aren’t actually mad at that person. You’re upset about _____________ in your past and this person may have triggered that.

• You aren’t actually mad, and full of rage. You just find it easier to express anger than your actual feelings of sadness and regret.

This is where non-judgment comes in. If we can condition ourselves to remain non judgmental in difficult situations, we wont act as emotionally, and therefore be able to gain traction in life as opposed to losing it. You can see where its difficult to reach baseline after any significant time reacting to judgmentally.

Here’s the thing, if you react non-judgmentally your normal baseline can improve. It’s simple, you gain traction by not destroying things. By deciding they are “the enemy” or a situation is a bigger deal than it is, you react emotionally and rarely make things better. That would be acting as if you know what everything is leading to and clearly, you don’t. The truth is reacting emotionally is stimulating in the moment. You almost feel righteous, am I right? However, it’s too easy an emotion to give into. If you don’t take steps to avoid falling into the trap of over analyzing life as if you can control everything, you will continue to regret the way you act. While these emotions are easy to give into, and sometimes feel good in the moment, as time passes they leave us feeling separate and shameful. We cannot continue to allow moments to invoke emotion to the degree we used to. The process of non-judgment, allowing things to pass, or “fall into place” is the process of getting out of your own way. Some say this is 70% of life, it’s probably even more for addicts and alcoholics.

Not reacting emotionally to what goes on is what a lot of successful investors will advise you to do when investing in the market. Long term strategy is the game, and addicts and alcoholics have a tendency to play short game too often.

If you start at the bottom right, the goal is to get to the top right, correct?

The problem in the stock market, just like in life, is that sometimes people will make judgments on what’s going to happen. Stock falls during bear market? Sell. Lose your job? Drink. The problem is that bear markets always happen, can last around fourteen months, and always bounce back. Sometimes losing your job, while emotional, tends to open doors to other opportunities in life. If those selling stocks when it’s low had read more history they may have been more informed, continued to gain traction, and eventually get to a new “baseline” of life that’s better. This is true for addicts as well, if they read their own history they would learn to not react emotionally, but to give space for their emotion. Acting according to your emotions is not giving them space.

This is literally exactly what happens with addicts and alcoholics early in recovery. Reality is painful cause they’ve remained blind to it for so long. Stuff happens, literally when I say stuff happens, it could be nothing. Addicts and alcoholics will make tiny problems into monsters for some reason. Anyway, this “stuff” happens and they “sell their stock”(get high) only to start this shit over later on. Read your own history. How beneficial is it for you to sell your stock? Probably not beneficial at all.

Non-judgment is just reminding yourself you don’t know. It’s when we think we know something that we tend to act wrong. This cultivates humility as you see over and over your initial assessments of people and situations tend to be wrong.

 P.S. I’ve been trying to re-write the chinese farmer story as a drug addict story. Give it a shot in the comments below.