“Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
Yesterday while cleaning my room, I dropped my bible on the floor, and when I picked it up, it was open to Matthew 7.
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with the measure with which you measure, it will be measured to you.”
And I don’t know about you, but I believe a lot in signs, so I started to reflect on the phrase, and I realized that it hides the principle that has changed my life since I hit rock bottom at 33 years old, until today at almost 42.
Patience: the principle that leads you to live in peace.
Having patience is often confused with tolerating others. But it goes far beyond the basic principle of giving others leeway.
To have patience with the people around you is,
- Showing respect for the work and lives of others.
- It is understood that everyone has bad days.
- Recognize and validate people’s efforts to get things right even if they don’t work out.
- Forgive when maybe the other person doesn’t expect that forgiveness or doesn’t deserve it.
And as Jesus says, if you don’t judge others constantly, people won’t judge you either because of the principle of reciprocity and courtesy.
And that takes most of the stress out of social, family, and work relationships.
The right measure.
Being demanding implies that they are equally demanding with us. And that can make the family or work environment unbreathable due to high expectations.
When you measure people as the imperfect beings they are and do not try to blame them when they are wrong, again, by the principle of reciprocity, people tend to give you the same margin when you are wrong that you give them.
And this will improve all social relationships.
It’s like an ice cube that you pour into the hot cocoa that your life has become, and suddenly it refreshes it.
Start not judging your loved ones.
And watch as the weeks pass things get better in your home.
Your loved ones’ view of you will improve. Because we all want to feel good, you will become the person who makes others feel good because they will take off the pressure of always having to meet the expectations that others have of them.
Think about it; someone very demanding is constantly angry with you. What do you do when you get home? You avoid them, don’t you?
Conversely, what do you do when you’ve had a bad day but meet someone who makes you feel better in their presence and they don’t judge you no matter what you tell them? You go to see him, don’t you?
This lesson from Jesus produces two immediate benefits.
- It relaxes tensions in your social, family, and work environment.
- It makes you a magnet for people; everyone will want to have you around 🙂
Remember: generally, affective factors govern the behavior of others towards you. People who do not have a proper affective relationship with you will always give you more problems than those who feel good.
And this has multiple applications among them,
- If your relatives feel affectionately by your side, for example, your child will give you fewer problems when it comes to obeying.
- If your coworkers or your employees feel effectively good with you because you give them more leeway, just like your child, they will be more obedient and consequently more productive 🙂
What about the WOLFS?
You’re probably thinking, “That doesn’t work with everyone because [Insert person here who drives him/her out of his/her mind] makes my life miserable no matter how well I behave, and don’t judge him/her.”
And you’re right; there are always wolfs 🙂
That’s why I will advise you on how to deal with them.
Do the right thing. Reread it.
When you do the right thing, you have nothing to fear. And that person who constantly criticizes what you do has only three options, a) capitulate, b) walk away from you c) get in real trouble.
Example,
I have a friend who cares for her father, and her siblings (who do not care for him) always criticize her when she makes a mistake.
She stopped speaking with them when her father got sick, fearing they would yell at her and criticize her as if everything was her fault.
And one day, I told her,
“You have to tell your siblings, every time something happens to your father, because it’s the right thing to do. They yell at you for not to do the right thing. They’ve programmed you like a Paulov’s dog to be afraid and in the end you’ll be the one to take care of everything. But if something happens to your father, guess what, they will blame you on the grounds that he was in your care. You have to let them know about the situation. Send them emails, or WhatsApp so that it is recorded in writing”.
My friend listened to me; her siblings called her to do the same thing they always do: yell at her. But this time, she kept sending them WhatsApp whenever something happened to her father.
She did the right thing. And doing the right thing is a weapon. Because when the time comes, her siblings can’t claim they didn’t know what was happening.
Her brothers went from being the good guys in the movie to the ones who had abandoned their father in the eyes of the law 🙂
Takeaway
The wolfs who abuse the others, even if one has a margin with them, play to get us into their game so that we do not do the right thing for fear of reprisals. Still, when you do the right thing despite their cries, in the end, the light dissolves the darkness because when one does the right thing, it exposes the one who does not do it.
And by combining these two mechanisms, 1) Not judging, having margin with people, and 2) doing the right thing without giving in to emotional blackmailers, your life will improve enormously.
A virtual hug
AG