Let's Talk About Judgment

I'm going to be really raw here. I struggle with judgment. Several years ago when I got coached regularly about my teens, at some point in every call my coach would point out that, once again, I was judging my teenager. 

I thought I knew exactly how my teens should spend their time, in what order they should get their responsibilities done (obviously get ALL the work done FIRST!), precisely how they should spend their money and save for college, which activities they should be involved in, how they should observe our religion, how they should approach school, and which grades they should get. And for some reason, even though I told them several times, my teens didn't seem to get it.  

It sounds a little ridiculous that I ever thought I knew all this stuff. Trying to manage the actions and behaviors of someone else (especially a teenager's) created so much stress and frustration in my life. Honestly, it made me CrAZy! Over the past several years, I have worked on letting go of things outside my control. 

Nevertheless…I still catch myself in judgment almost every day. 

But what I have now is AWARENESS. I know exactly what judgment feels like emotionally; what it sounds like coming out of my mouth; what it looks like in my body language. I know the alarms that go off in my head when I am spinning in it. Awareness also helps me see that I am the most judgmental of my teen(s) when I am the most judgmental of myself. 

Awareness is the first step in changing anything you want to change in your life. Trauma guru, Alex Howard, says: “If you can see it, you don't have to be it.” 

That means my weakness of judgment doesn't always have to be my weakness. 

I'm just going to keep working on it…by catching and redirecting my thoughts when I go there.