Don't Judge It
One day last week I hit that familiar 3 p.m. wall – the moment when my body whispered, “How about a nap?”
And immediately my Insane Thought Generator – the internal radio station with an incredibly unhelpful setlist – served up, “You don’t need a nap. Grind it out, or nothing will get done.”
This is silly for two reasons:
Rest is essential to sustained high performance.
I have a 40 year track record of getting it done, even when I’ve taken a nap.
But this is what our minds do. They quickly launch into judgment mode, delivering hyper-critical assessments of completely normal human experiences. The more I talk to clients, teams, and friends, the more I realize: We all have a personalized judgment list.
Here’s my Top 10 list. I’m sharing it with you to help me remember not to judge myself for these moments and to model what it looks like to say, “These are not flaws. They are part of the human experience.”
Afternoon naps. (You knew that one had to be at the top of the list!)
The unhelpful stories from my Insane Thought Generator.
The natural up and down of my mood.
The contraction that follows an expansion.
Not wanting to do something.
Once I have started something, the amount of time it actually takes to finish it.
Not finishing two of the ten things I planned on doing.
The occasional rabbit hole of YouTube music videos or accident reports on aviation mishaps.
Double, triple, and quadruple checking a previously booked hotel to make sure it’s “the right one.”
Becoming too emotionally attached to the outcome of a game played by a certain NFL team.
Putting It Into Practice
1. Shift FROM being the weather → TO observing the weather.
Our thoughts and feelings are the weather. We are not the storm; we’re just watching it roll through. That very helpful metaphor is from Dr. Dan Siegel, the founder of Mindsight Institute. Dan is one of the many teachers who’ve helped me better understand how the brain works.
2. Practice letting go.
Easy to intellectualize but tough to put into action, letting go isn’t a skill we master. It’s a practice we continuously return to. My colleague Ron Garfield and I just released new episodes of our Shake Shit Up video series, and we jam on how to shift from holding on too tight to letting go. You’ll find the videos on my Instagram or on Ron’s YouTube channel.
3. Replace judgment with curiosity.
Curiosity is something we have naturally as children. The world is new to us! We want to understand it, so we test the waters, question, experiment and learn. But it can easily take a backseat as we get older. That’s unfortunate, because curiosity is a great tool to help us come back into the present moment—where we can view a situation from multiple angles and perspectives, putting us in position to make optimal decisions. When I get curious about something it helps me turn down the volume on judgment.
Remember that 3 p.m. nap? Our bodies follow a roughly 24-hour internal clock (the Circadian rhythm) that regulates sleep-wake cycles, alertness, temperature, hormone release, etc. That circadian rhythm includes a natural dip in alertness in the early afternoon. My body was not trying to sabotage me; it was simply sending me a message.
I hope these suggestions help you turn down the volume on whatever unhelpful self-judgment story you’re experiencing today. One final suggestion: jot down “Don’t Judge It!” on a Post-it note and place it somewhere visible. (Mine’s on my Mac.) It’s my visual reminder that the next time my body asks for rest, not to judge it but to honor it — because sometimes the most productive thing I can do is pause.