Freedom From The Judge Back To Self-Love

Freedom From The Judge Back To Self-Love

In the past, when I felt anger or self-doubt, anxiety or terror, sadness, depression, or grief, I wondered…

What does loving myself really mean? And how, in the middle of my upset or challenges, do I get there?

The #1 thing between me and my self-loving is this little guy called The Judge. He likes to sit on my shoulder and tell me all kinds of things about myself.

The Judge compares me to others, judges me as “not enough” or “more than,” which is the same thing.

The Judge loves to tell me I’m messed up and need to improve. He likes to keep a wedge between me and my heart and others so that I won’t hurt. He likes me to have control to keep bad things from happening. He likes to protect me from my fears.

But judgment isn’t wrong. It exists for a reason. Judgment helps motivate us to strive for more of what we’re capable of. It helps us to make ethical calls and assists us in making the right choices for our best and highest good.

Judgment keeps us on our toes, so that we don’t fall and harm ourselves. It serves a purpose to a point. But there’s a way we can work with it to get our needs met so that we can continue to produce and create and succeed.

Here are 3 tools that helped me free myself of The Judge and get back to self-love. I hope they help you, too:

1.) There’s no problem with you.

Most, if not all, of our problems are based on old memories. We’ve bought into a story about who we are from our childhood; things we now believe.

A not-enoughness that wants to be enough; an unlovability that wants to be loved; a wrong that needs to be righted; or a lie that we are broken, somehow.

Whatever you deem as a problem can be recognized as simply a triggered emotional response from events that happened in your past.

You can use any moment of upset to ask yourself, What does this feeling remind me of? And then meet the circumstance from an updated perspective, new and in the present.

2.) We find grace by allowing ourselves to just be.

The Judge decides if we’re good or bad, enough or not enough, loveable or not loveable, just or corrupt, right or wrong.

Being in the in-between is where we find our freedom—the space that allows for anything and everything to occur. Like a trapeze artist, we let go of one bar and, while reaching for the next, discover that it’s in that gap where all self-love is received.

Being present with whatever arises allows us to open, let go and touch the undefined, unbounded possibilities available to us.

Fear subsides here. We no longer have the need for protection because we’re divinely flying through the air.

3.) The very fact that we’re on this earth means that we’re loveable.

Our opportunity as humankind is to recondition how we learn, to see every act, bad or wrong as an opportunity to be exactly that—human and kind—more compassionate, loving and accepting of ourselves. The result is more kindness, compassion and acceptance for and from others.

Funny, this whole way of thinking goes against how we were brought up to think. We thought we should be hard on ourselves to learn. But if we attempt to create change with a heavy hand, we set ourselves up for more suffering.

The idea is to see what we seek is already here.

We’re already loveable. We already have it. We don’t have to earn it, work for it, grasp, attempt, push, force, coerce or ask for it.

Love is already beating inside of us loudly.

To being messy and being you!