I know for a fact that everyone is judgmental. Even though we would rather worry about ourselves and mind our own business, this is easier said than done. No matter how much we like to think we aren’t judgmental and definitely won’t admit it, making judgments is inevitable. It is as if humans are born with a judgmental instinct. If we weren’t, we would have zero chance at survival and adaptation to our environment. Our lives revolve around making decisions, judging a situation and learning each other’s character, which ultimately is your judgement of that person. We have so many preconceived notions of how life, our experiences and other people should be we often do not judge enough for ourselves.

We all see and experience this all the time. Many decisions are based on things we have heard, like ratings, reviews and rumors. There is always two sides to a story, but you always hear one of them first. Psychologists have found that once we hear something it is hard for our minds to discredit the information, fact or not. That is a serious problem. We need to be able to judge in order to determine whether we actually like something or someone, feel safe or to know what can be expected of someone or a situation. We depend on these instinctual judgments and this can help or hurt us. Our judgements can be so easily flawed. How often do we sit back and think deeply about whether we are being realistic or have we thoroughly thought about the issue?

Consider how different the world would be if we could truly hear what is on each other’s minds and feel what is in their hearts. We often enough do not even consider how someone else might be feeling before we judge them or what is really going on before we judge a situation. We automatically assume what we want without giving any chances. This is literally instinct, we are not bad people for doing this. What makes it right is taking the time to hear both sides of a story or figure out the truth of a situation. If we take time to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, our understanding usually outweighs the inconvenience. A negative judgement can often inflict misery upon yourself, only making you unhappy every time you think of it. Even though it is very important not to be bothered by other’s judgements of you, a false, preconceived or negative judgments usually hurts the judge worse than the offender. You may be missing out on something great, living in a lie or misery simply because of an inaccurate judgment. So, by all means, feel free to judge, just consider who you’re really hurting. We all should try to judge the right way.