On Judgement

My cat, Mr Spooks, likes to sit nearby while I practice yoga each morning. He watches me a little, but he loves watching the instructor, Kassandra and looks forward to the occasional cameo appearance of her cat, Cleo, or dog, Luna.

And on mornings when he is especially captivated, ONE THING I like to do to indulge him is turn on some cat tv while I am having a shower and getting breakfast.

Sometimes, we like to chat about what's happening in the drama of the woodlands, park or backyard. And I have to say, Mr Spooks can be pretty judgy. "This bird's being bossy". "That squirrel was greedy". And I was surprised - and found it a bit hypocritical - when he made a disparaging comment about the rabbit wearing a fur coat.

We all judge things every day. We have preferments. "I think I will have tea this morning". "I wish my toes would bend that way". "She has a lovely handbag". "I hope I am never as rude as that person".

And we need to be able to make judgements to get stuff done, like prioritising this over that. It can be very annoying when you need someone to make a decision or a judgement, and they keep adding unrelated options as you spiral further into inaction.

We see the dark side of judgement when we criticise without having the full context, or make it about the person and their situation rather than the idea.

Judgement is useful and necessary to know what we value and for taking action. But used as a weapon against another, it's not smart, and it's not funny. It's just unkind, and we can do better.

Working with teams, I find we sometimes need to delve deep into the appropriate use of judgement and bring it to the surface for consideration.

Mr Spooks and I have come to an understanding because we now both know that judgement says more about us than about the other critter.