How to be Less Judgmental (Of Other People – and Yourself) | La Sarmiento
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2023
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Meditation and mindfulness doesn't uproot your capacity to be judgmental, but it can help you see the value in being judgmental by learning how to work with the judging mind.
La Sarmiento has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 1998. La is a mentor for the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program, a teacher with Cloud Sangha, and a contributor to the Ten Percent Happier app.
In this episode we talk about:
- How mindfulness can help us identify when we're being judgmental
- The difference between discernment and judgment
- How it can be so delicious to be judgmental of others – but why it's actually harmful to ourselves and others
- The four questions to ask when we notice ourselves going into judgment mode
- How to operationalize the phrase "am I suffering right now?"
- Investigating the motivations behind striving for success
- Why owning up to being a jerk is sometimes the exact right answer
Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/la-sarmiento-564
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% happier podcast. |
| 0:06.6 | Dan Harris. |
| 0:20.4 | Hey gang, greetings. |
| 0:22.7 | I have this vivid memory of being on a beach vacation |
| 0:25.4 | with a bunch of friends many years ago, |
| 0:27.4 | when I was first getting interested in meditation. |
| 0:29.9 | I was lounging and reading a book about Buddhism. |
| 0:33.3 | And one of my friends spotted me reading this book |
| 0:36.1 | and remarked that he could personally never do Buddhism |
| 0:40.3 | or meditation because he was a comedy writer |
| 0:43.1 | and he needed to retain his capacity to be judgmental. |
| 0:47.9 | There is so much to unpack in that comment. |
| 0:50.8 | I mean, I wish that meditation uprooted my capacity |
| 0:54.2 | to be judgmental. |
| 0:55.5 | I wish that the technology were so effective. |
| 0:57.7 | But anyway, I think the real misunderstanding here |
| 1:00.0 | is that there's somehow a lot of value to being judgmental. |
| 1:05.1 | I think that misunderstanding is based in a conflation |
| 1:09.2 | of discernment with judgmentalism. |
| 1:12.6 | If anything, I think mindfulness, clear seeing self-awareness, |
| 1:16.2 | the kind of skills you generate through meditation |
| 1:18.8 | will make you better able to discern the kind of details |
... |
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