7 Reasons to Be Less Judgmental ...

One of the reasons to be less judgmental is that it is exhausting. If you're spending most of your time making judgments about others, it can drain all of your energy. This is energy which you could be using doing more useful and productive things. Being less judgmental can be very liberating and helps you focus on yourself rather than on other people.

Being judgmental can make you bitter. Someone once said that judging a person "doesn't define who they are, it defines who you are." Think about it. If you're spending time festering and thinking about others and what they're doing or why they're doing it, it can make you bitter and angry. These negative thoughts and feelings can take over and can also make a person look as though they think they know everything. This can have an impact on friendships as people are less likely to want to be around someone who is constantly judging everything and everyone around them.

Sometimes, we don't actually have all the information to be able to make sound judgments anyway. It can be easy to make judgments about other people and their lives but we often don't have all the necessary information to do so. If we haven't walked in that person's shoes, how can we really make a judgment about their life and how they're living it?

The tables can quickly turn in life, which is another valid reason to be less judgmental. Put yourself in the other person's situation and think about how you would feel if others were making judgments about you. Everyone has a story and there is a reason why everyone is the way they are. This is why it's best not to listen when people are gossiping about someone.

Let's face it, nobody's perfect and this is another reason to be less judgmental as we go through life. When I find myself making a judgment about others, I think about the fact that I am less than perfect so I shouldn't be making judgments about other people. As someone once said, "don't be so quick to point out the flaws in other people's lives when you are not willing to look at the flaws in your own."

The fact of the matter is that we're all different and we all have different ways of looking at the world. This means that making judgments about other people is almost impossible. We haven't lived everybody's life so have no idea what it is like to be them. We might meet someone covered in tattoos and piercings and make a judgment about them before we have even spoken to them. We can learn something from everyone we meet in life if we just embrace differences and give people a chance.

Being less judgmental will make the world a better place. I know it's a stretch but I believe that being more compassionate and more understanding about other people's situation and their reasoning behind doing something, will make the world a more tolerant and pleasant place.

It's hard not to judge others as it's something we often do quite naturally. How about you? Have you have been on the receiving end of the 'judgment brigade'? How did you deal with it? I would love to hear your experiences.