Everyone judges, and you should let them
By Blogger Vandita Manyam
Perhaps you might not completely agree with me; you might even think I’m wrong. Well, that’s fair, but I want you to hold on to that thought for the next 4 mins until you finish reading. Then you can judge whether we should let other people continue judging or not.
Motivation of wanting to do something begins as soon as you receive extreme criticism and feedback from the people you never thought would judge but do. Your desperation of wanting to grow begins from your closest friends telling you that you can’t do something. It’s those people who you trusted more than anyone else that let you down when you really needed them. It’s the strangers staring down at you who were once your best friends. And, it’s the voices in your head telling you that you aren’t good enough until you really try.
If you haven’t seen it yet, I’d like to welcome you to the world that judges endlessly. Vast majority of people sleep at night, some animals during the day, but judgment? Never.
People don’t and will not stop giving you judgment, so why should you take it so personally? It’s not like you don’t do it. You do, don’t you? You might want to say “no” but deep down you know that wouldn’t be the truth. Fair enough, but when I talk about judgment, it doesn’t have to reflect on judging people; it could be judging clothing, personality, drawings, movies, music, etc. We as humans judge all the time and tend to point our finger at others to emphasize their shortcomings and hide ours.
This is what happened to me. I admit that I’m guilty. I’m guilty of judging many writers and authors. A common statement I tend to make is, “this person isn’t worthy enough to trust because they shared my biggest secret”. But have I not made mistakes? What makes it okay to judge others when I’m critical of their judgments towards me?
Surprisingly, these questions in my head helped me grow and realize a few things. Rather than getting offended, I decided to overcome my judgment by giving it a different name, perhaps a specific category; I called it positive criticism. Many others I’ve witnessed faced endless challenges within this area.
Another way to think about judgment in the tech world is “bug fixes and tickets” that QAs file to help sharpen your code. The QA’s job (quality assurance) is to nitpick on code that you thought was perfect. However, you take those tickets that are files and fix the bugs in your scripts. It seems overwhelming but the only way you better your code is to work on each of those tickets, one at a time.
In correlation, do the same with the verbal judgments you receive on a daily basis. Put all those judgments into a jar and pull one out at a time. Work on it and see how much you can fix before moving on to the next. Sometimes you might realize that your product — you- are meant to work the way you do. There is really nothing to fix, and that’s okay. Come to a realization that you are happy with yourself, even after all those judgments.
I mention this because people recently advised me that all I have to do is fix the grammatical errors and fragments to make my blogs good. But I want to ask them, “what about the content? Will the content change if I fix the mistakes?” No, the content gets stronger, but why is it that you only focus on my content after I fix my grammatical errors? The content is the same, isn’t it?
Here’s a little story before I let you go. I started writing only because I was never good at it. I’m sure I’m still not good, but I’m trying. I’m trying to focus on writing better content rather than grammar and sentence structures. With practice and effort, I will improve on my grammar. However, the main point of blogging is to voice your thoughts to others through writing. Be creative and write a message that you want to share. Thus, I write in one go, without any edits. If time permits, I’ll try to edit a little bit. The reason for writing in one go is to conserve my content. My content is more important to me rather than grammar edits and fragments. I’d rather have a strong message over a close to perfect copy.
The grammatical errors and fragments are purposeful. There are many people who want to to share and publish their thoughts but are afraid because they consider themselves “not good enough” in others’ words — not good at sentence formation or at grammar.
Stop lettings judgments affect your goals and wants in life. Do whatever you want to do. People exist to motivate you, not to let you down. Some do it in a way that is hurtful, and others do it in a way that make you feel grateful, but in the end they both are judging. They both belong in the same jar.