Think Twice Before You Judge Anyone

Here is a story to tell you to think twice before you form judgements about people.

I am a true follower of the Kaizen theory which is an approach to creating continuous improvement based on the idea, that small ongoing positive changes can reap significant improvements.

There could be so many things which are not yet revealed to you about your personality and those hidden attributes erupt only after encountering some life-changing experiences. They may be small incidences but they bring in some significant revelations.

I never knew that I was developing a habit of getting easily judgmental about people unless I encountered one small incidence that changed me drastically. I was blown out of disappointment but at the same time was happy to have that small experience as an indication that somewhere I was building that habit of being judgmental.

A story about judgements 

This is a small story which forced me to look within and look beyond things. There is a nice saying that “When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself” and that exactly happened with me. I am penning this down without feeling any shame about my past tendency, that I had developed and was rescued at the right time, because this may throw some light on the readers who too may go back and think about those incidences where they too might have judged somebody, maybe their loved one’s or friends without knowing the facts or the background and could have damaged a beautiful relationship.

I was lucky enough to have this experience with a person who was neither my loved one or was my friend but still, this incidence at least helps me raising my guards for self-improvement.

It so happened that in the search of some worthy training programs on NLP, I had written one mail to a trainer about a course he was offering in Bangalore. I was impressed by that trainer as I immediately received his response with details of his training program and the fee structure.

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Since I was convinced with the structure and the content of his training program I made up my mind to attend that and I planned to book my tickets and stay at the same hotel where he was conducting his program.

While I was planning to travel for that residential program, my Mom met with a small accident. That was the time when I had to cancel the program and luckily I had not yet booked my tickets. The only thing which I had done so far was that I had given my confirmation to that trainer.

He had sent me a welcome mail as a reply to my confirmatory mail but then since I had to cancel the confirmation, I had to reply to him urgently. On his mail, I replied telling him about my Mom & my incapability to attend.

We had exchanged 4-5 mails already and he was sounding to be a very prompt & sensible trainer till that time but after my last mail informing about my mom and cancellation of my plans, my impression about him got changed bitterly.

I used to remember him many times but resentfully for not even sending one courtesy mail after that & inferred that he is a right example of “Great cry & little wool”. Thus I created a strong, harsh and fixed opinion about him.

Forming judgements is not good

After almost 4 months I again received his follow-up mail. Irritatingly I read his mail and found he had asked about my Mom’s health and if I have plans to attend the next program which was coming up in next month. I grimaced at his mail and wondered how money-minded he could be for asking me about my plans but he had no courtesy of responding me four months back when I informed about my Mom. It was disgusting and I had already created a mental picture of this trainer.

The moment I was about to close his annoying mail, I luckily found something. Just below his latest mail, I found his old mail too where he had conveyed regret for what had happened & had also conveyed wishes for my Mom’s recovery. It was his response to my last mail where I had informed about the incidence.

I was taken aback and I immediately checked my inbox & found that he had written back on my last mail also & it was me who had missed checking his mail. I had created so much negativity about that man in my head that it didn’t allow me to give a benefit of thought and initiate to check my mailbox once again. I was so quick to judge his fault but was not quick enough to judge mine.

I have been carrying so much bitterness all those days & easily judged him but in reality, I was too busy to check his response mail. I felt ashamed of identifying this characteristic of my personality but was happy to have this experience that enlightened me to check myself and correct that immediately. Luckily that had not made any damage anywhere so it was easy for me to repair that.

I wrote him back politely as that was the best thing to do at that time. Henceforth, I ensured that this doesn’t happen again and I am happy to have learned a big lesson in a simple way. This may be a very small and maybe a very insignificant story but for me, it was worth experiencing because I had always disliked those people who always had announced their judgement about somebody without a check but I was unaware that I too had been infected by this habit and I guess this was caught soon and could be set right at the right time.

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