Awareness of judgment: The way to refine yourself

Our path in life is determined by the choices that we make. Our current life is determined by the choices that we made in our past. The choices that we make now determine the path of our life in the future.

Choices & Judgment: Judgment precedes making of choices. Say for example, we make a choice to perform or skip a task. The decision of whether to perform the task or not is based on our judgment of the task. Consider my task of writing this blog. I made a decision to write it because a judgment was made within me that urged me to sit and write this blog. Obviously, any judgment is based on the need of the hour but significantly it is based on what we believe to be correct. Even for you to read this blog, you have made a choice based on your judgment which urges you to go ahead and read the whole blog. There is a possibility that a few individuals would have simply skipped reading this blog just by merely looking at its title. This is again based on the individual’s personal judgment and choice.

Beliefs: There is an underlying belief within us that controls the nature of our judgments & choices. So the way in which our life is currently operating is based on our present beliefs that we hold. These present beliefs are the ones which assist us in judging an event and allow us to make choices. It is good to change our mode of operation when our present mode of operation does not yield desired results and does not help us in moving towards our goals.

Awareness: In order to change the way we operate, it is important to change our current beliefs. A good method to redefine our current belief system or to add new beliefs is to become aware of the manner in which we judge the events. Unfortunately, most of the judgments happen so spontaneously and automatically without our conscious control. In fact, judgments of our life experiences are so habitual & instantaneous. We can start moving towards our life goals once we are aware of this automatic judgment process taking place within us. You will be overwhelmed to see that we pass thousands of judgments on any given day.

So, the first step is to become aware of our judgments and bring them under our conscious control. By, doing so, we will acquire the ability to break this automatic process, add new beliefs and redefine the existing beliefs that aid in moving towards our goals.

Practice: Spend five minutes in every three hours of your time in doing this practice. Recollect the events/experiences/situations of the past three hours & see how you made the judgments & choices. It is good to write down your observations in a journal. Repeat this exercise at least four times a day & continue this practice for at least twenty one days. At the end of this practice, you will certainly see the pattern of your judgments. Since, this pattern and belief are within your awareness field, it becomes easy to direct them in the desired direction.