On 30th April 2022, I was sitting in the front row of The Ultimate Experience event held at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London. It was the culmination of a lot of hard work over the previous nine weeks to pull this amazing day together with amazing colleagues (many of whom I hadn’t known before I got involved with the project). I sat looking up at Steve Hardison, the man known as The Ultimate Coach, speaking more passionately than anyone I’d ever heard in my life.
He shouted two words over and over: Stop judging!
They hit me like a ton of bricks. I was stunned. They hit me because deep inside, I knew that I judged far more than I cared to admit. I knew inside that I was judging constantly, pretty much daily. What I’ve come to realise over the past year is that this judgement of others was a reflection of my own self-judgement.
It was a reflection of me believing a bunch of really negative thoughts I had about myself. Thoughts that were all a version of, I am not enough. I’m now seeing the behaviour of judging others as less of a personality flaw and more of a reflection of a blind spot that I had about myself.
Two and a half weeks after the London experience, I started my 10-hour coaching agreement with Steve, which required me to take all the sessions in person in his Arizona home office. This was a huge commitment of time, money and energy. I didn’t expect that much of our work would be eliminating so many of my deep negative beliefs about myself through a process of compassionate self-forgiveness.
Due to that work, and the deep process we went through together, I have found myself being so much more loving towards myself and everyone in my life. My experience of life has become richer and more joyful and I’m less sensitive to the judgement of others because I’ve genuinely started to see that their judgement has nothing to do with me. In fact, their judgement often brings up deep compassion for them.
Some years ago, I interviewed my friend, mentor and colleague Dr. Keith Blevens, about the one fact that affects all relationships. Keith is a licensed clinical psychologist with degrees from Indiana University and Texas Tech University and lives from a place of love and non-judgement. I highly recommend this episode. Please check it out below:
With love and appreciation,
Ankush Jain
Coach and Author of Sweet Sharing – Rediscovering the REAL You
P.S On the 4th-6th of November I’ll be speaking at The Viva Event, a wonderful Three Principles based event about realising the richness of life. I want to let you know that their no-brainer discount offer is only available until 14th April, which you can find out more about here.
