Stop The Judgement-Part 1 of 2

We discuss the benefits of not judging things, and talk about how to avoid deeming situations "good" or "bad" and to instead take things as they are.

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter with your host,

Glenn Ambrose.

Hello,

Welcome to today's podcast.

This is Glenn Ambrose and welcome to,

What is this called?

Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter.

That's good.

I'm glad you could remember the name of your own show.

I know,

And we're kicking it right off with the laughter aspect.

So here we go.

Today we're going to start talking about not judging things as good or bad.

How should I judge that you didn't introduce me?

I shouldn't judge it.

Yeah,

Don't judge it.

It just is.

It just is.

Don't judge it as good or bad.

By the way,

Everyone,

This is Ben.

I'm back.

You were back last podcast.

No,

I wasn't.

It was the one before you missed.

Oh,

Was it?

Yeah.

So,

I don't know.

I'm not a fan of the show.

Okay.

This is a vote of confidence.

So,

Hey everybody,

Just to stroke Ben's ego.

He's back and we're happy to have him.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I missed you guys,

You podcast family.

Yeah.

All right.

So what are you teaching me today?

Today,

We're talking about not judging things as good or bad.

They just are.

I think we're going to have a hard time with this one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Good.

That'll give us stuff to talk about.

Yeah,

Probably.

So yeah,

Basically,

The,

You know,

What's that saying?

There's something,

Nothing is good or bad,

But thinking makes it so.

Ooh.

Who said that?

I don't know.

We should Google it.

All right.

But anyway,

So yeah,

There's a lot of truth to that.

You know,

Nothing really is good or bad.

It's just happening.

You know,

If we judge it as good or bad,

Then that's where the struggle comes in.

You know,

Perception is our reality.

So a lot of times people are,

People have different perspectives on things.

So some one person can deem something is very bad and some person can just be fine with it.

And,

You know,

Because of that,

The person that deems as bad is struggling,

You know,

And has a very,

It can impact their life in a very negative way.

But the reality of it is it just,

Everything just is.

It's just,

We might not like it.

It doesn't mean we have to like everything.

It just,

Everything just is.

It's happening.

And for us to resist it or judge it,

It doesn't change it.

It doesn't,

You know,

It doesn't do anything to the situation.

It still is.

So it's the most,

One of the most ridiculous things that we can do is fight against what is.

You know,

We can be stuck in traffic and sitting there going,

Oh my God,

I'm going to be late.

This is,

This isn't right.

There shouldn't be this much traffic and all the things that we play in our head.

It doesn't do anything but cause our own emotional suffering.

The fact is you're stuck in traffic.

It's just,

It just is,

You know,

It doesn't,

It doesn't mean it's bad.

It might mean that it's,

It doesn't enhance your plans in life the way you wanted your day to go,

But it doesn't mean that it's a bad thing.

It just is.

What makes it bad is us struggling against it.

Now you just said that you don't have to like it,

But you have to understand that it just is.

Um,

Is it not liking it,

Judging it a little?

Well,

It's,

It's mainly about acceptance.

You have to accept it and not struggle against the fact.

If there's some action that you can take to get yourself out of it.

Like if you're sitting in a line of traffic and,

Um,

Let's say you turn on a radio and there's some accident up ahead and on the radio you hear them say,

You can use the breakdown lane to get off on the next exit and you don't do that.

Well,

Then that's foolish.

You know,

That,

That,

That would be kind of,

It's I'm trying to use that as somewhat of an example of having action to take,

To get yourself out of the situation and not taking it.

You know,

So,

So that,

That would be foolish.

But if,

If you're sitting there saying,

I don't,

I don't like being stuck in traffic.

I don't like being stuck in traffic.

I don't like what,

What's that accomplishing?

It's not accomplishing anything.

It's not getting you out.

It's not creating that pathway.

You can accept,

You can say,

Okay,

I'm stuck in traffic.

I am,

I accept that I am now all of a sudden you hear on the radio,

You can use the breakdown lane to get out.

Okay.

You use the breakdown lane to get out.

So just because you accepted where you are doesn't mean that you don't take action to get out of it.

If action is possible.

Okay.

Um,

You dig?

Yeah.

What about,

Um,

What about people?

When I think of the word judgment,

A lot of times I think less about judging situations and more about just like straight up judging people.

That's a good point.

Yeah.

And a lot of the judgment does come in that form.

Um,

And it's,

It's,

It's a good example.

If we are the,

I don't know if I mentioned this before,

But I love it.

This,

This little line,

It says,

Um,

Um,

Basically it was talking about the conflict in the middle East and it said it was,

Um,

The inability to make room for a comparing narrative.

So that's the problem in the middle East that,

That these people over generations and generations have been unable to make room for a comparing narrative.

So basically it's allowing people to think differently than you think,

You know,

And that's basically what our judgment is.

If we're looking at somebody and you know,

We,

We're judging what they do though.

They shouldn't be doing that.

Well,

Who are we to say they shouldn't be doing that?

You know,

It's allow them to,

To have their comparing narrative.

They have a right to live their life the way they live their life,

You know,

As long as they're not hurting anybody.

Again,

That's when it comes to action.

And this is where things get blurred and where people will argue their right to stay unhappy is they will argue their right because they'll,

They'll throw up a situation.

They'll say,

Okay,

Well,

You know,

What if I'm walking down a street and there's a guy punching a little child and the head over and over,

You know,

Well,

That's not right.

I don't know why I laughed at that scenario.

Well,

Probably because it's so absurd,

You know,

But,

But yeah,

Okay.

So stop it.

You know,

Like when there's action to take that's appropriate,

We can still take the action.

That's appropriate.

That doesn't mean that we just sit back and go,

Oh,

Okay.

He's stabbing me in the leg with a knife.

Well,

It is.

Yeah,

I accept,

You know,

That's not what we're talking about.

And you don't,

If you go to that big of an extreme,

Nothing will make sense in this world.

There is always,

There is always some extreme situation where we can say,

Well,

I can't accept that.

You know,

I mean,

You,

You,

Well,

You'll say you can't accept it.

You can actually accept anything.

Taking action to change something is different than accepting it.

You can accept that something's happened.

And actually you take better action.

Once you've accepted the situation,

Things become a lot clearer once you've accepted the situation.

So once you accept what is happening,

You're calm.

You're not caught up in the emotional turmoil of the situation.

If there's action to take,

It's much clearer to take.

And it's one of the,

I guess,

Scientific reasons for that is because,

You know,

We are made with this fight or flight response.

What happens when we get emotional,

When we get upset,

Our brain literally stops having the ability to think clearly.

You know,

And you can see it in people's actions when they're upset,

They don't actually act clearly,

You know,

Obviously.

But what that the reason for that is because their brain literally slows down and we're not capable scientifically of thinking as clearly because we're trying to be our body is trying to push us into fight or flight.

That's what,

You know,

We got to remember our bodies were kind of created and developed with these defense mechanisms a long time ago,

You know,

When we had different dangers,

You know,

So if you come around a corner and you see some tiger coming at you,

You know,

That's ready to rip you apart.

You don't have time to sit around and,

You know,

Jesus,

Are his teeth long enough to penetrate my jugular?

Is this really going to hurt?

Boy,

I like the shade of his fur.

And you're not going to sit there and think about it.

What you need to do is you need to act you need to either fight or flight.

You know,

That's that has to happen.

So your ability to think gets shut off and pushes you right into the fight or flight.

So what is that what makes us I feel like there's a there's a stigma,

There's a condition,

I don't know what the right word is,

An epidemic,

Maybe of everyone.

It's a culture of judging.

That's the that's what I want to say,

Especially America right now,

Because that's all I really know.

I don't live anywhere else.

So America has such a culture of judging.

We judge everyone.

We judge celebrities.

We judge races of people.

We judge sexuality preferences,

Political right.

But the Asian like we have such a strong divide on so many issues because people I feel like are blindly judging other people by a certain characteristic or by a.

Do you agree with that?

Is there am I wrong?

Is that you're you're right.

I mean,

Yeah,

There's tons of judgment.

But the it's kind of the way the way you phrased it.

I took it and you may not have been inferring this,

But I took it as it sounded kind of like this is a new thing.

Or,

You know,

Or the United States is like we do it,

But other countries don't.

It's like I mean,

This is the this is the human condition.

Well,

I feel like it's almost celebrated now here.

Yeah,

I mean,

And I you're probably right to some degree.

But you get you know,

It's we're in a different society.

So it's manifesting in different ways.

But people tend to romance the past so much.

And like everything was better and simpler and we weren't so horrible to each other.

Baloney.

I mean,

If you look in history,

You know,

Look,

Look at the causes of you know,

I'm not even going to say all wars,

Because that might be too controversial.

But most wars were why?

Why did we have them?

Because we were refused to make room for a comparing narrative.

That's why,

You know,

Most of them were based in religion.

Well,

Why Why are we fighting over religion?

If God says thou shall not kill and basically all the religions have a God that or many gods that say that we're not supposed to be killing each other and we're supposed to be kind and loving to each other.

All the religions say that.

But yeah,

We're killing each other.

Because you have to love God the way I love God,

Not the way somebody else loves God,

You know,

So so all these wars have been going on for for 1000s of years over the same thing.

You know,

It's the human condition.

And,

You know,

I mean,

I believe we're shifting out of that.

And this is why I'm having shows that discuss this type of thing.

Because people are ready to hear it now.

Like I can have this conversation now.

And people are going,

Yeah,

You know,

All right,

And some some people will agree with it and try to live their lives by it.

Some people won't.

But at least it's it can be open up for discussion.

You know,

I think 50 years ago,

Or 100 years ago,

If I were to be running around telling people stuff like this,

They'd be like,

Get out of here.

You know,

There's no way.

And who knows,

Maybe I would have been burned at the stake as a witch.

Because they couldn't make room for my comparing narrative.

You know.

So it's,

You know,

That that's a,

That's a big aspect of it.

It's the human condition.

It's it's how we're,

You know,

We wonder why there are so many problems in society.

This is why this is one of the founding reasons because we walk around judging other people.

And we don't allow people to be themselves.

And we fight,

You have to do everything my way,

My way is the right way.

And if I believe that,

Then what we do is and you,

You know,

You can see this,

It's clearer with the bigger issues.

Like war,

We can demonize the other person,

We can stand so firmly in our belief that the other side is wrong,

That we actually take the humanity of them away.

Yeah,

You know,

We'll be they are no longer human.

Right,

We can kill them.

And,

You know,

And well,

Unfortunately,

You know,

Innocent people get killed in wars,

Too.

Not that that's anybody's intent.

But I'm sure that that,

You know,

We can justify killing lots of people who don't believe the way we believe because we standing,

We've stood so firmly in the fact that they don't believe what we believe in our way is right.

You know,

And I think that we're in the middle of the change.

And whenever I kind of go this far in that direction on this topic,

You know,

I want to I believe that I'm a realist.

I don't think that I'm living some pie in the sky existence that I'm not aware of how things function out there.

So you know,

I understand that there are dangers right now to the United States and other countries.

So I'm not saying that we should all just sing kumbaya and disband the army.

That's,

That's not that's not what I'm saying.

You know,

That would be unrealistic to do in this society at this time.

What I'm talking about is just starting to implement these these beliefs in our own lives.

And,

You know,

I'm using the larger picture as an example of how whacked it is.

I mean,

The reality of it is if I walked down the street and killed somebody that didn't believe what I believed,

I would be in jail.

But yeah,

Countries are doing it to each other all the time.

And not just ours.

You know,

Countries are doing it just constantly.

And we go,

Well,

Well,

That's just how it is.

And so no,

It's,

It's just a larger example of somebody killing somebody because they don't believe what they believe.

You know,

So like I said,

I mean,

I don't think disbanding the military is the solution.

It's just kind of to stop putting things into perspective and seeing how if if we if we don't start taking care of our own headspace,

And start,

You know,

Gandhi be the change you wish to see in the world.

We can start with ourselves.

We can start with our community.

We can start with our friends,

We can start looking at things in a more healthy way.

And then who knows how that's going to impact the world as we move forward.

The All right,

Going back to the individual.

Um,

I feel like even in a situation like that,

Where you're trying to I know people and I might be guilty of this myself,

That look at other people that,

For example,

A lot of the Christian beliefs,

People,

People that are that are Christian that that,

You know,

Tout the the Jesus saying,

Don't judge other people like,

Judge not lest you be judged thing.

And then so like that for for whatever reason and and I saw someone's Facebook status about this the other day that there's a meme going around that said like,

Um,

What Jesus told everybody and then they they had that line highlighted.

And then they said what people think and then they blacked out the rest of the pages.

And they were like,

See,

He said that but you really should judge people for everything.

And I'm like,

I'm like,

No,

You guys are like I have I've constantly since I was a little kid going to church,

Gotten upset at people that like tell you not to judge other people and then are exclusive and down talking and judge people constantly.

And then I realized,

I don't know,

A few years ago that I'm then judging those people for for judging others.

Exactly.

And that's,

You know,

One of the things that serves me well is somehow I don't know where this came from.

I don't know if it was innate,

But I have this really big problem with being a hypocrite.

Yes,

I don't like being a hypocrite.

It just rubs me the wrong way.

So I use that to catch myself and by no means am I perfect at it.

But I use that to try to catch myself from judging,

You know,

So because I have to I have to make room for other people's judgments,

Even about me.

You know,

If somebody wants to say something negative about me,

I have to be able to sit back and go,

Okay,

That's their opinion.

I don't happen to agree with it.

They have a right to it.

I have to be able to do that.

If I expect people to not judge me,

You know,

If I be able to if I if I want to live in my world,

In my reality,

Walking through without people judging me,

It's you know,

It's not going to stop 100%.

But I've stopped people judging me to a large scale what they used to just by the changes I've made in myself,

The less I judge other people,

And the less I judge myself,

The less people judge me.

It's and my reality,

The people around me that I associate with,

You know,

Are less judgmental because I'm less judgmental.

And it's just,

You know,

Sometimes people will,

They'll judge a lot of other people right in front of me.

But then when it comes to me,

They won't.

And,

You know,

Like,

I won't.

At first,

I didn't,

I didn't think it was possible.

I didn't quite understand why.

But it's,

It's a spiritual law.

Basically,

What you put out,

You get back,

We do have control over our own existence.

And that's one way I've seen it in my life,

The people like I don't have people attacking me,

Like I used to.

Because I'm not attacking others.

You know,

I don't have people judging me so much.

Because I'm not judging others so much.

Am I perfect at it?

No.

Am I still getting judged somewhat?

Yeah.

I'm sure I am judging you right now.

Yeah,

See,

There's a case in point.

I told you this one would be difficult for me.

By the way,

The fact check from earlier in the episode.

Can you say the quote again?

No,

That was like off the top of my head was things aren't good or bad.

Thinking makes it so.

Yes.

Hamlet.

It was Shakespeare.

See?

Yeah.

Wow.

I'm like really cultured.

Yeah.

When I'm quoting Hamlet,

That's a pat on the back from this blue collar tomboy.

Nice.

So it's not a new philosophy.

No,

And none of this is.

That's one of the coolest parts of it really is that as I learn this stuff,

The philosophies that we're talking about,

I not new.

I mean,

They go back to Buddha.

They go back before Buddha.

But Buddha,

Jesus,

One of the coolest things that I've heard of was just to touch on the Jesus thing a little bit was that they have,

I believe it's called the Red Letter Bible.

I haven't read one.

I want to.

And it's everything that Jesus said is in red letters.

Oh,

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I mean that like every Bible I've ever had is a Red Letter Bible.

Oh,

Really?

Yeah.

I've never even seen one.

Oh,

Well,

I mean,

I haven't been practicing Catholic for quite a while.

I am not Catholic.

Let's phone a Catholic and see if they have Red Letter Bibles.

I don't know.

But anyway,

So they they I mean,

I haven't I haven't I haven't seen one,

But I've heard about them and I've heard that they're just phenomenal because it kind of takes a lot of the interpretation out of the Bible and puts in like well,

Like you were saying earlier,

Jesus said this.

OK,

Let's do that.

Not if not unless not,

You know,

Set up all the exclusions around it.

I didn't understand why when I was a little kid,

But during Sunday school,

I would just grab a Bible and start reading the red letters because they look different and cool.

Wow.

I did probably served you very well.

I don't know that I remember most of it,

But I yeah,

I would like just because I was I also liked they had by the way,

I did phone a Catholic friend and they do not have Red Letter Bibles.

Oh,

But yeah,

I am.

This is an awesome producer.

I got a couple awesome producers here.

Thank you.

I fact checked your quote and I found a friend all in the time span while you were talking.

I'm impressed.

So yeah,

That's a that's a great idea.

I can get you one if you want.

Yes,

Please.

All right.

Well,

That just saves me from pressing order on Amazon.

It'll be a gift.

It'll be a gift.

I'll get you one as a two year present and I will judge you in it.

I will write all my judgments about you on the inside cover as an inscription.

Oh,

That sounds scary.

You can keep those to yourself if you'd like.

Well,

I'm going to get rid of them because I've learned today that judging people is bad.

Oh,

Judging situations,

Which let's get back to.

Yeah.

Let's end with judging situations.

Judging situations.

Don't do that.

Well,

Thank you guys very much.

This has been episode something of life lessons and laughter.

I don't have the I don't have the number in front of me.

Twenty two,

Twelve,

Seven.

It's ten.

Eleven.

Eleven.

My Catholic phone a friend has told me that it was eleven.

Yes.

And he's right.

Of course.

The yeah.

Judging judging situations.

I think the important part is just to realize that it doesn't do anything.

It doesn't change the situation.

All it does is cause emotional suffering.

You know,

It's just the judging the situation.

If you just accept what it is and then do what you need to do to get out,

You're going to reduce a lot of the emotional turmoil that you go through.

You know,

It's not necessary.

If you're stuck in traffic,

You're going to be stuck in traffic.

Now during the let's say you're stuck in traffic for half an hour and there's no way to get out of it.

Okay.

That's going to happen.

So for the next 30 minutes,

What how do you want to spend that 30 minutes in a place of acceptance and peace or in a place of anger and turmoil?

That's the only difference.

What about what about the fact some people would say and I know that you said like people fight to stay in their misery.

What about the people that say that they they like being upset about that?

That's like 30 minutes.

Of course.

Why am I I'm going to be upset.

I'm going to yell.

I'm going to flip out.

I'm in traffic.

This is a bad situation.

Of course,

I'm going to judge the situation.

What about those people?

Well,

And they have the right like if you are really bound and determined that you want to be unhappy,

Nobody can stop you.

You know,

It's the same thing with being happy.

If you're bound and determined,

You're going to be happy.

At the end of the day,

Nobody can stop you.

I mean,

Look at Nelson Mandela being in jail all those years and he found a way to be at peace and be happy.

Nobody can stop you from being being whatever you want to be.

If you want to be happy or you want to be miserable,

You have that right,

You know,

So so the people who really fight with me about that stuff like at some point,

I just got to step back and go,

Okay,

Well,

If you want to be miserable,

You have every right to I can't take that away from you.

Go you go be miserable.

But it's just be clear that it's your choice.

You don't have to be miserable.

And being miserable is not gaining you anything.

It's not getting you out of a situation quicker.

It's not allowing you to come up.

You know,

The other thing I kind of touched on this is when you're in acceptance,

You can generally think clearer because you're not caught up with all that emotion.

And if there's an abstract way out of a situation,

You're more apt to find it then because you're thinking clearer.

All right.

So I completely agree with all of that stuff.

And there's been a lot of good stuff in this episode.

But not judging is very big.

It's a very big subject.

True.

And so far today,

You've covered not judging people,

Dealing with judging people and trying not to judge people and trying not to judge situations.

And we mainly focused on small situations,

Things that you can't control that are that are small,

The everyday things.

So you are going to do a part two.

I am not judging.

What are we going to talk about next time?

The we're going to expand on this a little bit more.

And it's we're going to go into the the the aspect that suffering is when you don't accept where you are.

Basically,

All suffering is resistance to whatever is going on.

And it's unnecessary.

You know,

We inflict our own suffering.

All right.

And that's what we're going to talk about next time.

Yes,

We are.

And if anybody has any questions,

Where can they send it?

They can send it to me.

That was great.

That was your you're nailing the intro and the outro of this episode.

Well,

I was really going for a dramatic pause.

Sure.

Some people some people would call that a blank mind.

No,

Let's get back on topic.

Send them to life enhancement services dot com.

You still had no idea.

I still I still went blank right when I went to speak.

I had it right until I went.

And let's go to and then I lost it.

Well,

Write them down for you next time.

I didn't know how hard it would be to put your own email address.

Oh,

Yeah,

My email address.

That's oh my god.

That's too funny.

All right.

Yeah,

Send it to my email address.

G Ambrose dot l e s at gmail.

Com.

Or you can go to my website,

Life dash enhancement dash services.

Com.

Or my Facebook page personal or business life enhancement services business.

I think that's it.

All right,

Cool.

All right,

Cool beans.

Cool.

All right,

We will see you for part two.

And there will be some more laughter and some lessons.

This podcast is presented by New Shore Productions,

Executive producers Glenn Ambrose,

Benjamin Barber and David D Angeles.

Reviews

Glen is always great!

Thank you so much! Listening to number 2 now 🙏😀

Loved it. Definitely going to listen to part two now 😇 thank you

This is great, guys, thank you! The concept of the hypocrisy of inception-level judging those who judge especially resonates with me as I try not to judge others who judge, especially when they are judging others for judging others. 😉🙏🏻💛

This was a good one. Thanks to you Glenn and Ben! 💜x

Love it! Always love the banterror between you and Ben. It enhances all the other information given. It is a perfect example of going with the flow. Humor is a bridge that takes us further into ourselves. I'm not sure where that last sentence came from, but instead of over thinking it, I will send it anyway. Humor is medicine.

Thanks for the insight!

Will have to start over and that’s ok. I am wondering where is the second half of number 1?

Entertaining and informative

Don’t like the 2 person conversations. It was like a comedy act? But I understand the process. It was just ok 👌

Wonderful to listen to as always. Thank you ❤

These podcasts r inspirational n accessible. A "enlightenment for dummies"🙏🏻

Always a Good Talk!! Thank you. Really Nice ✨✨✨

Outstanding ‼👏🏻

Making me think
Thank you