Are You Judgy?

You know when you meet someone, and you can't help but make mental notes.

Or someone catches you giving them the stink-eye when they're doing something questionable.

Or that 16-year-old with the neon hair says, "What'er you lookin' at?"

Now when someone catches you giving them the side-eye, you can turn to them confidently and say, "I'm judging you."

Because everybody judges.

It's a fact.

You can't help it. Nobody can, and there's no escaping it.

So stop beating yourself up.

Because you're not necessarily a snob or a jerk.

Studies say you're probably just trying to survive.

What you're actually doing is subconsciously asking yourself these two questions:

• Should I trust this person?
• Do I respect them?

Because these two questions can be a matter of life or death is a survival situation, we evolved to instinctually ask them.

Also, our brains are wired to make automatic judgments, so we don't have to spend too much time or energy processing everything we see.

Imagine if you had to consciously and thoroughly process every interaction with every person you came in contact with. You'd be exhausted just ordering your morning coffee.

We save that process for ruminating about more pressing matters, like why your co-worker snapped at you this morning or why your friend was acting so shifty last night.

So why not harness these to help you make better life choices and change the world one small judgy look at a time.

Because when we judge each other, what we're really doing is keeping everyone in line and on the same page.

And no, I'm not talking about trying to repress other people's personal freedoms.

This isn't about looking down on people who look, love, or worship differently than you.

This is about keeping us all on the same page to survive better as a species and make the world a better place.

Because, like it or not, no matter who you are, what you look like, or where you live, your story is my story because we're all human.

All of us:

• Come into the world reliant on others
• Need social connections for survival
• Face loss and pain
• Face challenges and change

Must accept that we're just one tiny part of a bigger picture, and there are lots of things – environmental, social, financial, and political – that are out of our control.

Go through a set life cycle where we grow and change physically, emotionally, intellectually, and psychologically. We all transition through stages from childhood to adulthood and on into old age and death.

So, judgment can be seen as collective wisdom when harnassed for good.

It rights wrongs and addresses injustice. It's what allows us to make progress as a society.

It keeps us all on the same page and goes hand in hand with our old friend shame, an internal superpower.

It tells you when you're doing something you shouldn't.

It's your conscience.

Everybody's had a moment when you've done something stupid, and as your doing it, in real-time, a voice in your head is telling you to stop.

That's shame, trying to bail you out before you get in too deep.

I've never much cared about what anyone thinks of me. People assume that's an excellent quality, and it has come in handy at times.

But it was developed as a defense mechanism, a way of coping with my toxic family. So while it's served me well in some ways, I don't think it's been wholly positive.

I remember being that teen with a pink mohawk and saying to some old man (my age now), "What are you looking at?!!" Of course, he was looking at me.

He was judging me. He couldn't help it.

If I hadn't had such a dysfunctional way of relating to the world, caring about what people thought of me could probably have saved me a lot of pain and danger.

I might not have gotten so drunk so often if I cared that someone might be disappointed. I might have chosen to stay away from the soul suckers and preditors I surrounded myself with if I was worried about what someone might think.

And since we're all judging each other, maybe we should stop pretending we're not?

But be prepared. If you have something judgy to say to someone, I'm 100% sure they'll have something to say right back.

Test this theory by telling your partner one thing they do that bugs you and see what happens.

Conversely, if you're doing something you know in your heart is right, and it's riling people up, that's okay too.

You shouldn't be afraid to be judged for being yourself, who you are inside, or your beliefs.

If you can logically defend what you do, you're living with integrity and conviction.

When we take this to the next level, then we're talking about having a social conscience.

Social conscience can be:

• Collective self-awareness
• Shared social identity
• Being part of a connected community
• The feeling of "we" or "us" of social unity.
• A catalyst for working towards a common goal

So, sometimes we use our collective social conscience to buck the system in the hopes of moving society forward towards ideals like racial/gender/religious equality.

Banding together to fight against something that we judge as harmful is a way to take collective wisdom to the next level.

When we do this, collective wisdom can become a social movement.

Social movements have the power to alter history and change the world.

Some social movements you've probably heard of are:

• Women's Right to Vote
• Civil Rights Movement
• LGBT Rights Movement
• Mothers Against Drunk Driving
• Occupy Wall Street

Here are a few you may not have heard of:

• Effective altruism
• Situationist International
• Slow Food
• Economy for the Common Good
• Brights movement
• These social movements have been founded and maintained by regular people just like you and me.

People who've made judgments and acted on them.

Sometimes it takes the wisdom of a whole group of people to move society forward, to leave behind harmful and unjust practices.

So the next time you see someone looking at you with those judgy eyes, give them a little thumbs up.

Because if you live with integrity, their opinions shouldn't make much of a difference, but maybe, just maybe, they're trying to save you some heartache.

And who knows, their judgy look might be the start of a new social movement that makes the world a better place.

Judgment doesn't have to be a bad thing when you look at it like that.