There is a big difference between judging yourself and evaluating yourself. Evaluating yourself can be done with understanding and compassion. Judging yourself only undermines your basic goodness. If you look into your idea of self, you will see that you are basically good. You can see that you love and are loved, that you want happiness for yourself and others, that you would prefer not to suffer. Those are the qualities of basic goodness. If you look into yourself and cannot see basic goodness, then you have been a harsh judge of yourself and you need to change that habit. If you can recognize your basic goodness, then you can see the futility of judging yourself. If you understand your goodness, then additional judgements can only detract from that goodness.
In order to stop the judgements you need to give your internal judge a time out. The judge has a hard time stopping. It is a habit. If you make the choice to stop your judge, your judge will fight you. It will continue to undermine your efforts. It will tell you you can’t do it. It will tell you, you’re wasting your time. It will tell you anything it can think of to stop you from stopping it. As you give the judge a time out, your job is not to judge. If the judge offers an opinion, recognize it and let it go. If you judge the judge, that is the judge again. Recognize that and let it go. If the judge makes a judgement that makes you feel bad, remember your basic goodness and let the judgement go again.
To give your judge time outs, set some time aside each day and sit with your mind to watch your judging habit. Take five or ten minutes and watch your thoughts. Focus your attention on your breath and remember your goodness. Keep breathing. When a thought arises, see if it is a judgement. See if it is categorizing your experience into good or bad. Return to your breath and remember your goodness. Remember the goodness that is beyond judgement.
If you learn to watch your judgements in those five or ten minutes of time out, you will build your capacity to notice judgements. You will begin to notice them all day long and by noticing them you will deplete their power. As you practice, you can expand your awareness to see how you judge others. See how you judge your circumstances. These are natural objects of a judging habit. They hurt too.
It is not necessary to eliminate your judging habit. Even if you are able to stop all judgements and see basic goodness in everybody, everybody else will still be judging. They will judge themselves, each other and you. When you are skilled at noticing all the judgement going on, you will see how it interferes with understanding basic goodness and causes suffering. When you develop that understanding, you will no longer feel bad for yourself when somebody judges you, you will feel compassion for them. If you condition yourself to remember your basic goodness each time you judge or notice somebody else judging, you will always remember your basic goodness. That is how judging yourself can make you happy.
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