Open Your Heart, Stop Judging Yourself

Q. I am constantly criticizing myself and judging other people. I want to open my heart and I don’t know how to do it.

Every child is always told he is wrong in everything. Slowly, slowly he catches the disease of criticizing himself. And a person who criticizes himself cannot forgive others. How can he forgive? His whole life simply becomes a condemnation – condemn yourself, condemn others. Then love becomes impossible, friendship becomes impossible, and he simply suffers.

Whenever you say to somebody, “No, you are wrong,” you feel powerful. It feeds your ego. Wherever the child goes, everybody is enjoying power, and the child is crushed. And when so many people are saying that he is wrong, naturally he has to believe it.

But remember, as a reaction, he starts judging others. When everybody else is judging him, there is no reason why he should not judge others. You are teaching him to judge, to judge everybody and as much as possible to judge negatively.

And this is our world  where everybody is judging himself as wrong and judging everybody else as wrong. How can you be loving, friendly, trusting? How can you open your heart? It is not a beautiful situation. You have to understand: asking me, “How to open my heart?” is not the real question. The real question is how you managed to close it.

Whatever you are doing, if you like doing it, do it. There is no question of judgment; nobody else has the right to say that what you are doing is wrong. If you enjoy it, you are not harming anybody, you are not disturbing anybody.

So instead of judging, start accepting yourself with all your imperfections, frailties, mistakes and failures. Don’t ask yourself to be perfect. That is simply asking for something impossible, and then you will feel frustrated. You are a human being after all.

Once you accept yourself, you will be able to accept others because you will have a clear insight that they are suffering from the same disease. And your acceptance of them will help them accept themselves.

We can reverse the whole process: accept yourself. That makes you capable of accepting others. And because somebody accepts them, they learn the beauty of acceptance for the first time  how peaceful it feels  and they start accepting others.

If humanity comes to a point where everybody is accepted as he is, almost 90% of misery will simply disappear and your hearts will open of their own accord and your love will be flowing.

Nobody is perfect, so you have to accept a state of no-love, or accept that it doesn’t matter whether somebody is imperfect. Love can be shared, shared with all kinds of people. Don’t make demands.

Love them, respect them, and perhaps your love and respect may help them change many of their weaknesses, many of their failures  because love will give them a new energy, a new meaning, a new strength. Love will give them new roots to stand against strong winds, a hot sun, heavy rains.

If just a single person loves you, it makes you so strong that you cannot imagine it. The heart will open by itself. Don’t be worried about the heart. Just do the primary spade work.

Are You Comparing Yourself To Others?

“A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it, it just blooms.” There is also a saying, that the only person you should try to be better than is who you were yesterday.

In a competitive world, where social media is a popular platform for news and views, we are tempted to constantly compare ourselves to others. We get bothered by what others think of us, and when we see their achievements, we feel inadequate. This is because we are not sufficiently aware of our own self-worth.

The trouble with being preoccupied with the achievements of others is that we tend to ignore our own accomplishments.when we focus on other people, we lose time we could otherwise invest in ourselves. We don’t grow grass by focusing on our neighbor's garden; we do it by nurturing our own. That is why she advocates self-acceptance, in which we love our past, because it has made us – with all the mistakes we have made  into a better, wiser and more courageous version of ourselves. By embracing our own story and the way we have grown from it, we change our mindsets, attitudes and the direction we take in life.

The measure the world uses today to gauge our successes is based on material achievements and peak performances and not on what we have overcome. People are endowed with many gifts. While one person may be a good writer, another may be a good cook, or an orator, mason or carpenter. The secret is to develop the talents we have and to put them to good use. If we are content with who we are, that is the best antidote to making comparisons.

Serving others is yet another way of overcoming the tendency to make comparisons. When we serve others, we focus on our strengths and what we have to offer to the other. Service increases our value, both in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. When we serve, we do not focus on the accomplishments of others, but on our own talents and ability to reach out to them.

Social media often makes us restless, unable to perceive the underlying reality of our own lives. We are challenged daily to discover our own unique path in life. The only healthy way to compete and make comparisons is when we try to better our own performance by looking at others who have achieved much. Their achievements can act as a spur to do what we are capable of doing, better.

The business world thrives on competition; it makes them manufacture better products at lower cost. Sports persons compete for titles and organisations compete to render better service. In the process, people do make comparisons. If we use the high standards set by others as a benchmark to improve our own act, there is no harm in making comparisons. But, if we use comparisons to switch lanes and to take on ourselves what we are not comfortable with, we may make a serious mistake. It is only when you recognize your own potential and strive to better yourself that you gain confidence and improve the quality of your actions.