Our secret addiction

The drug you don't know you're taking

Sep 21, 2020

I have the privilege of working closely with leaders around the world, in a variety of roles, with a range of backgrounds, at every level. Amid this diversity, it never ceases to amaze me just how much, at our core, we have in common.

Especially when it comes to our suffering, so much of which is rooted in the same intoxicating substance: judgment.

This is good. That is bad. I am right. He is wrong. She is talented. I am not. These are the thoughts running through our minds constantly, evaluating and comparing everything around us, as well as everything about us. Appearances, abilities, credentials, potential. People we know. People we’ll never meet. And above all, ourselves.

We are never not judging.

Most of us naturally assume we can’t achieve, succeed or exist without judgment. Our opinions, our positions, our likes and dislikes—aren’t they what define us? Aren’t they essential to our leadership? Who would we be without our judgments?

If that question seems absurd, I’m not surprised. As powerful as judgment is, it is also pervasive to the point of invisibility.

I’ve come to see judgment as a drug, to which we are all addicted.

Applied to ourselves, judgment is a downer, a depressant. A fiction dressed up as fact, it robs us of our purpose, our perspective and our potential energy.

Applied to others, judgment is an upper, a stimulant. It fills us with the toxic fuel of righteousness, which burns so bright we can’t make out the insecurity underneath.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. The compulsion to pass judgment on others is often a thinly veiled strategy for distracting from the pain of our own perceived inadequacy.

However, the antidote to our own self-criticism is not the criticism of others. Nor do we become a more skillful judge of others by denigrating ourselves.

So what to do? Does judgment rehab demand we turn off our senses and default to some insipid neutrality? Not at all. To lead effectively we need to retain our ability to discern between what is good and working, and what is wrong and needs our work.

And there is our key: We can distinguish between discernment—our ability to perceive and assess with clarity—and judgment, which adds the heft of ego, the presumed authority of comparing mind and a false sense of finality.

Judgment says, “This is better than that.” “I am better than you.” “You are better than me.”

Discernment can see, “I am good at X, but I need to work on Y.” “We can improve on Z.”

Judgment is obsessed with self, even when directed at self. Discernment is interested in truth, even at the expense of a faithful identity narrative.

Judgment is unconscious and messy. Discernment is conscious and clear.

Discernment is judgment without the highs or lows. Without the addiction. Without the self.

The cure for our addiction to judgment is also the path to discernment:

Curiosity and care, in equal doses.

Curiosity replaces judgments with questions. The declarative becomes inquisitive. The self relaxes. The mind opens. The view expands.

Care won’t judge the judgments that remain. Breaking the cycle. Yielding ease. Making room for more questions.

Practicing Curiosity

You’ve probably spent most of your career acquiring and delivering answers to other people’s questions. As we gain authority in leadership roles, we tend to double-down on our answers, our expertise, our judgments. And we stop asking questions.

Powerful questions are essential to practicing curiosity. What don’t I know? What am I missing? What’s most important here? What can this situation teach me? How can I see it from another perspective?

When it comes to judgment, these are the two questions I ask myself:

POWERFUL QUESTION 1: “What if the opposite is also true?”

When I’ve bought into a story about someone being my adversary, this question invites me to consider that they may also be a helper, a teacher, a guide. Thus, I stand to benefit from this battle with them.

When I rush to judge someone’s ability or character based on a mistake they’ve made, this question forces me to consider the bigger picture and the whole person involved. Then, patience and compassion are more readily available.

More often than not, it also has me reckoning with my own responsibility in the situation at hand, which supports my ability to discern the wise path forward.

POWERFUL QUESTION 2: “Who would I be without this judgment?”

This question is all about imagination in the service of liberation. Watch what happens in your mind, in your body, in your life, when you consider a reality in which you didn’t hold this opinion so very tightly.

How does that feel? How does your view shift? What new possibilities emerge?

This question can apply to any thought or feeling that has us too firmly in its grasp: anxiety, regret, need for control, insecurity, you name it. Fill in the blank with your own difficult thought or feeling: Who would I be without this ______?

Practicing Care

The goal is not to eliminate judgment from your thinking. That’s not going to happen, so we can just let that aspiration go right now.

Instead, our goal can be to see our judgments as they arise. So we can get curious about them (see above) and shift into a more discerning, less attached mindset.

Beware the trap that is judging our judgments: I shouldn’t have this thought. There I go being judgmental again. I always do this.

This is where care comes in. We can choose to be kind to our mind, even our judging, comparing mind, and see that it’s doing the best it can to make sense of things for us.

We can offer ourselves a different response, a discerning response: Ah, judgment is here again. I see. Let me take a breath. Can I soften a bit? What powerful question can I ask?

Most of this post was written before the passing of Supreme Court Justice, feminist pioneer and cultural icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but the timing is uncanny: I can think of no better representative of the difference between judgment and discernment.

Ginsburg’s convictions were courageous and her thinking crystal clear but she was no ideologue. She was not dogmatic. She was dear friends with her political opposite. As President Bill Clinton said when appointing her to the highest court:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg cannot be called a liberal or a conservative; she has proved herself too thoughtful for such labels. As she herself put it in one of her articles, and I quote, "The greatest figures of the American judiciary have been independent thinking individuals with open but not empty minds; individuals willing to listen and to learn. They have exhibited a readiness to reexamine their own premises, liberal or conservative, as thoroughly as those of others." That, I believe, describes Judge Ginsburg. And those, I too believe, are the qualities of a great Justice.

May we follow her example of an open but not empty mind. May we too be willing to listen and learn. May we endeavor to examine our own premises as thoroughly as those of others.

That’s how our inner judge gets promoted.

We Can Change

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