Do you also experience a very unkind, critical Inner Judge, commenting on your actions and behaviours, and sometimes on your being, with this kind of sentences?
„You are never good enough”. “You should have done this better”. “The others are better that you”. “You are an impostor who soon will be discovered”. “You will never manage”.
Many clients start working with me being already aware that they have a critical inner judge.  

I have also a critical, unkind, Inner Judge. I stopped to listen to him because it was always repeating the same kind of message: “you did it wrong, you should be different, how you are is not ok”. It is not nice, and this voice didn’t help me to achieve anything. On the contrary, it made me feel demotivated and blocked. In order to listen what my heart was telling me to do, I had to stop to give my Inner Judge attention.

This “stop to give him attention” was not one time action. It is still on going and to do this, I need first to feel what my Inner Judge is saying, then I pay attention to the reactions it creates in my body and afterwards I work on stopping these reactions through breathing, movement and shifting my attention.

Stopping the Inner Judge creates every time a more benevolent attitude towards myself.

A benevolent attitude: isn’t the kind of attitude that we would like to receive and we strive to develop towards others?
But how many times the attitude towards ourselves is too hard – we would never talk to another human being the way we talk to ourselves – or too indulgent – unable to respect the basic promises we made to us.
When we consider the sentences I gave as an example at the beginning of this article, we can reflect that on itself, they are not “bad”. They could be feed-backs pushing towards improvement, commitment or better results. They could, if they would be used wisely, at the right moment and in the adapted dose. Not as a default mechanism commenting everything you do.

You are maybe already familiar that from an evolutionary point of view, the fact that our attention is awaken and attracted by “problems” make a lot of sense. Until two hundreds of years ago, sickness, problems in the community, inadequate behaviours that could provoke your expulsion from the group, predators, weather changes were all potential life threats. Then you would particularly pay attention to these and it will probably stick on your mind. But the rest of the time, the mind would have an uneventful, peaceful and relaxed time.

Today you need to attend a retreat to offer your mind an uneventful and relax environment.

The stress and even the anxiety generated by focusing on problems – real, potential or imaginary – maintains a state of alert and of criticism in the mind that prevent to focus on gratitude, satisfaction, joy.
To support the process of stopping – feel what the inner judge is saying, pay attention to the reactions it creates in the body and then work on stopping these reactions through breathing, movement and shifting your attention – I recommend to nourish another kind of attention: not the one focusing on problems, on pushing, on comparison and criticism, not the “normal” attention we apply for efficient fast and profitable task.

But the one creating a state of wonder, of peaceful astonishment.

When we are in wonder, we are. We enter in a moment where being is more important than doing. It is the experience we can have while listening – truly listening – to music. While admiring some kind of art. While observing nature not with a scientific look, but with curiosity and amazement about the variety of life. It is when the rational mind shouts up because there is nothing to say, just to feel and to be.

So stop to give your Inner Judge attention : feel what your Inner Judge is saying; then pay attention to the reactions it creates in your body; finally work on stopping these reactions through breathing, movement and shifting your attention.
And open yourself to a state of wonder, of peaceful astonishment.

Picture taken at the Nonam, a strong moment of wonder!