Why It Is Foolish To Feel Bad When People Judge You

This is a guest post by M.Farouk Radwan .

M.Farouk Radwan is the writer of 2knowmyself.com. He is a full time blogger and his work has received coverage on several middle eastern TV channels and popular newspapers such as OTV, MBC, El Youm TV, Cairo today, International Herald Tribune,  el Ahram newspaper and monowa3at TV.

One of the most popular causes for lack of self confidence is becoming one hundred percent dependent on others to feel confident and worthy.

The problem with that approach is if people judged you in a negative way; you will feel bad and sometimes worthless. 

There is no doubt that in order to become really confident; you shouldn’t really pay too much attention to what people say about you, especially the ones who really don’t know you.

Although it’s easier said than done, because even if you tried not to care about the opinion of others, you will still feel bad when you are judged.

The only solution to setting yourself free from the unfair judgment of others is to understand why people judge others and how their judgment is formed. Once you understand the process, you’d become more effective in handling judgements.

The psychology of judging others

You might be thinking it’s a selfish attitude not listening to others or considering their opinions and the following facts may help in providing a different perspective or possibly change some of your views:

• The human mind was designed to fill gaps, we assume the intentions of other people when we have missing information and most of the time this leads to incorrect judgment.
• Our past influences the way we judge people, for example if a woman was betrayed by a man, she might assume any man who acts in a suspicious way is a cheat.
• We relate people’s looks to their personality. If you met an arrogant person in the past then saw someone who looked like him/her you’d assume they both have the same personality
• We believe that others are like us, if someone lies all the time he/she will find it hard to believe others because there’s an assumption everyone is a liar
• Our beliefs affect our judgment, if someone thinks all rich people are thieves then there’s a possibility he/she would think that you are a thief the moment he sees your expensive car
• Stereotyping highly affects people’s judgments, anybody who has certain stereotypes fixed in his brain might judge someone incorrectly and we develop stereotypes as a result of media exposure.

Most people will judge you incorrectly and in order to gain confidence, you should assign no weight to their judgment unless they are really rational people.

Who can judge you the most?

If a friend spent 10 years with you, won’t he be more likely to judge you correctly? (provided that he doesn’t have any judgment bias). Of course he will be able to judge you better than someone who has just met you.

Now the question you should ask yourself is, who has spent the most time with you? Your father, best friend, partner?

No!!

It’s you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You are the only one who has full access to your intentions, beliefs, core values and dreams thus you are the only one who can judge yourself.

Tagged as: confidence, judgement, M.Farouk Radwan, self, self confidence