I find that we are often very sensitive to how others react to us and what they think of us. We can feel uncomfortable very quickly or feel happy in public depending on how strangers react to us, whether it is a waitress, someone in a park, or a person waiting in line.
We especially expect our family and friends to be accepting and loving toward us. Yet it happens quite often that we do not do for others what we hope to get from them. Immediately upon seeing someone, we make a judgment that more often than not leads to criticism: “She’s ugly. He’s dumb. She’s annoying. He’s too aggressive. She’s too insecure.”
We do not have to say these thoughts out loud for them to affect us. Our unfavorable thoughts, silent as they may be, still shape our inner world. We often do not even realize that we enjoy being judgmental.
When we think something like, “I can’t believe that person would do that,” we are usually trying to give ourselves a quiet pat on the back. We are trying to feel better about ourselves at someone else’s expense.
It is an innate physiological trait of all living things to size up another person and make an immediate judgment about whether they are safe. That said, human beings also have awareness, and once we understand something, we gain a choice in how we react to our first thoughts and whether we agree with them.
The saying “Don’t believe everything you think” is very fitting here. Just because our first thought about someone is negative, critical, or disdainful does not mean that we have to stay with that thought.
There is a strong part of us that has the ability to disagree with or ignore that first impulsive reaction. We can choose to feel differently. We can choose to think differently.
