MVP: Judgmental thoughts about our actions

Hey there, sis! Are you tired of the guilt, shame, and disappointment that often stems from self-judgment? We promise you're not alone. In today’s  episode of , we talk judgment - its roots, its impacts, and how we can manage it in our daily lives. We all judge, and that's okay! It's part of being human. But how can we ensure it doesn't consume us or hamper our actions? That's what we're here to explore together.

Throughout this episode, we take an introspective journey into the depths of our judgmental thoughts. We don't just identify these thoughts; we challenge them, question them, and we learn how to turn them around. We all harbor lies that we tell ourselves, and it's about time we called them out, don't you think? By becoming mindful of our thought process and habitually reframing our negative thoughts, we can set a path towards truth and a healthier mindset. Now, that's a journey worth undertaking!

We also dive into the heart of our military community and highlight the blessings and challenges it brings. We look at the critical role of faith and spirituality in shifting our mindset and guiding us towards more positive decisions. Join us  and let's navigate the choppy waters of self-judgment together. 

P.S. ​If you enjoyed this podcast, I'd love to ask you to follow and leave a quick review. It only takes 30 seconds, but it makes a huge difference to my show. Click here to open Beyond the Military in Apple Podcasts to leave your review.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, sis, welcome to Beyond the Military Podcast, where faith-led military women overcome burnout and create more balance. Just imagine having enough time to focus on your faith, family and have more fun while still serving as a woman leader. In this podcast, you will walk away with the tools to help you navigate the busy life of a military woman, organize your mind, overcome overwhelm and create a privatization playbook and a balanced blueprint for integrating faith, family and career. Yeses, in that order. Hi, I'm Wendy Ray, woman of God, wife, mama of two, army veteran and certified life coach, and I'm here to help you create a life of meaning outside of the military, a life of laughter, joy and intentional free time. If you are ready to overcome burnout and create balance as a faith-led military woman, sis, this podcast is for you. So loosen up your laces and grab your coffee, because it's time to step into freedom and peace.

Speaker 1: 0:56

Hello, ladies, and welcome to episode 115. How are you doing? I hope that you're doing well. I hope that you are healthy. I hope that you are feeling amazing and, honestly, just ready to get through this week and really get as much as you can done, because that's how I'm feeling now. I am just feeling really well, feeling really blessed that I'm healthy and everything's going well, family's doing well. Of course, there's always room for improvement. Of course there's always better seasons, but I'm just so grateful and so thankful for where I am now and again, just hoping that you are also going through a similar experience. If not, I'm here to remind you that it's okay. We are all in different seasons. Some of us have it rougher during a certain season and some of us have it in a different way at different seasons as well.

Speaker 1: 1:58

So, again, I want to talk today to you about judgments, not only like how we are judging ourselves, but also judgments about our actions. And when I talk about this, I am referring to also even actions that we've already taken and even actions that we were wanting to take in the future. So, past, present and even the future and for the most part, you all we tend to judge ourselves even more on our past actions that we've experienced, that we've pretty much been through, and that does affect us. Affect us not only in the current moment, but also in the future as well, and this is one of the reasons why I really want to talk about this. And this is really big on every individual, no matter if you're a woman, a man, no matter what you're going through in life, no matter what goals you have for yourself or what goals you don't have for yourself. Like this is something that just is a part of our human brain that comes with us as a package, and especially, you know, as a Christian, and even if you're not a woman of God or you consider yourself a Christian, it's still going to happen, and so we are kind of wired to have this mind of that's going to remind us that you know or find faults in either ourselves or in other people right In situations.

Speaker 1: 3:41

So I want to offer this episode more specifically to. If you're someone that is typically most of the time hard on yourself, and what I mean by that is that you have this expectation and if this expectation isn't met or you're nowhere near it being met, then you really beat yourself up and you're just really hard on yourself for not really creating that result that you expected or the expectation was in it. So this is really for, again, any of you that are, you know, struggling with all of that stuff in your mind, and, again, it's really difficult to see it if you don't become aware of it, if you aren't completely aware of what's happening in your mind, you're not filtering your thoughts, you're not really taking the time to see what exactly you're judging yourself about or still judging yourself about, based on the past or even in the future. And so I want to start by just, you know, kind of setting the tone here on hey, we're all guilty of this like we are the most judgemental species humans It'll ever be, no matter what you know, type of individual you think you are, your personality, you know, at the end of the day, this is something that we typically do automatically we judge anyone that walks through the door. I mean, within an instant, we can come up with you know ten great things and ten bad things, that you know that person, how that person is showing up, and we do that in front of the mirror. We do that with our children, with our spouses, we do that with our family.

Speaker 1: 5:22

Members are like, oh, they shouldn't be this loud or they shouldn't say these words, or, you know, look at how they're dressed or just look at their personality. I mean, it's just so many things that go through our mind and I want to offer you this moment to Be okay, to consider yourself a judgmental person, or even a person that has any judgment about anyone else's actions other than yourself, because it's completely normal, but I, what I also want to emphasize here is that we want to be able to be aware of when that is happening, because it can really show up also in your own actions, right, like how you are perceiving another individual or how you're perceiving yourself. It's really going to show on how you show up and how you Really respond in that situation with other people. And so, again, I think this is a very important topic For many of us, especially women, when we are going through so much already within our day-to-day that Accumulating or adding to the judgments that we already have or continue to accumulate are not going to help us show up in a way that we would, you know, really be proud of or in a way that we want to show up. And so, again, allowing yourself to Be okay, that this is a part of us evolving, a part of us improving and just being better humans, better women of God and In leaders, moms, wives, and it's just something that I think the more we can practice, the more that we can be aware of, the better you will be, and so, a lot of the times, at least, when I'm coaching and I there to hold a space and Really do my best to not judge any you know any Actions or thoughts that they're having or how they're feeling about something you know, I immediately Don't tell myself Okay, you shouldn't be judging her, you shouldn't be judging the things that she did or how she's thinking.

Speaker 1: 7:28

Instead, I allow myself to just be okay with the judgments that are gonna come up, because the more I try to Resist myself from doing that, the more the judgments gonna come and I'm gonna focus on, you know, my clients. You know actions or thoughts that they're having. So instead, I go in with an open mind and I'm like okay, when do you're gonna have judgment about whatever this individual says, how the person shows up in camera, if they have someone you know in the background, if their Wi-Fi is slowing down, whatever it may be. I already come with an open mind, knowing that that is what my mind is going to offer. So what I do to help me not only say, focus on the actual, on my actual client and the actual solution for my client and how I can, you know, present their thoughts to them.

Speaker 1: 8:16

What I like to do is just be okay with a little bit of noise in the background, and that's my mind telling me oh, that's a great you know color that she has on, or it's so great, you know her background is amazing. Or, oh, look, there goes her son in the background or her daughter in the background, but it's going to happen. And so how I, you know, deviate from merely focusing on what's happening and, you know, having all these judgments about maybe, oh, you know, or her, her daughter, should not be, you know, playing in the background. It should just be a space for her and me, or Anything that you know she, how she feels about something, oh, she shouldn't feel that way. That's immediately gonna, you know, come up in my brain because of how my brain already works. But what I like to do is not focus so much on that, but just be okay with. Okay. Yeah, thank you for offering me that thought.

Speaker 1: 9:14

But right now I'm focused on what my client is telling me, what's going on and really what the problem and how I can help Show her that she has a solution already and to make a decision, and so on and so forth, and the next steps instead of being suck, and so this is kind of like the similar approach that I want to offer you to take when your brain is offering you all these judgments, when your brain is giving you thoughts like what is wrong with me? Like what are you doing? Like what is wrong With my situation was wrong with my outcome, because our minds are not going to give us that, especially when, like, we prepare for something for such a long time that when you know the outcome is not what you expected, your mind immediately is gonna be like I told you you shouldn't have done it. I told you you should have taken that leap. I told you should have just say in their safe area. You knew that you were not the one, so why did you do it? And then you, you know you become this individual. That's like paying attention and risk and actually responding to these thoughts that Actually are just there to help you survive, to help you Stay in this safe Space.

Speaker 1: 10:30

And what I mean by that is most of the time that we get all these judgments, all these thoughts, judgment, judgmental thoughts about our actions, is Because our brain is just trying to keep us safe from any harm, and by harm I mean that most of the time it's a negative emotion. So it could be guilt, it could be shame, it could be disappointment, it can even be anxiety, it could even be the feeling of being stressed out, and so that's all our brain is doing. My brain all is trying to do is to keep me focused most of the time. So this is why, when I know how my brain operates, I know how I am as an individual, I get distracted easily. So what my brain is trying to do is Tell me all these things that can be a distractor so that I can stay focused. But it's actually doing the opposite. It's highlighting to me like oh, she shouldn't have, you know, her kids in the background. She should be more prepared, she should be there on time. She should you know all of these things that just continue to come in.

Speaker 1: 11:36

But instead I'm like, no, I'm choosing not to really pay attention to these judgmental thoughts that are coming in, because this time is solely for me to hold a space and provide feedback based on what's going on in their mind and to show them that they have the solution, that they have the answer and that they are the only ones responsible for their next steps. And so for you, when you immediately start getting these thoughts, like Again, like the most common one is what's wrong with me, what is wrong with my situation, what is wrong with my circumstance, what is really wrong with who I'm being? And the answer is nothing. There's nothing wrong. And what happens is when you start feeling this like shame or guilt, or disappointment, that's really when you want to start identifying. Okay One, I understand that this is normal for my brain, because my brain is just trying to protect me and To this is the time for me to become aware, I Of when it comes up the most. So, for example, if it comes up for you After you know you you did something that you weren't so sure of or you weren't too confident about, then you know it's because your brain, again, is just trying to keep you safe. It's doing its normal thing, trying to protect you.

Speaker 1: 12:58

But what I also want to offer you to do is to just be aware of when that those thoughts are happening, that exact moment. It's a for mostly you may be during presentations, it may be when you're putting yourself out there. It may be in social interactions. It may be when you maybe say you're like of you have this platform and availability to say something and you did not say what you intended to say, or it happens at home, when you're on the way home, and now you, you know, have to change roles and change the hat of, you know, being a Supervisor to now be in mom and a wife, and so being aware of when it comes up the most is definitely gonna help you.

Speaker 1: 13:48

Because what also happens to, at least for me, what used to happen Well, especially when I used to always be late picking up my daughter and my son, I'm leaving the office, or I mean late in that being there on time again for my kids to pick them up, I would immediately my mind would be like what is wrong with you? Like what kind of mother are you Picking up your kids late almost every single day? You said you weren't gonna do it again. You did it all week this week, and here we are again, and so then I will show up frustrated at myself. I'll be frustrated at myself, I would be frustrated with, then, with you know, the people at daycare, my kids, my husband with now I have to do dinner, and I'm just feeling frustrated the whole time because, again, I wasn't aware of what was happening in my brain. All of these thoughts kept compounding and this, these feelings of guilt and shame, kept compounding as well, which wasn't serving me at all. Not even in that moment, again, my mind was going back to my, to the judgmental thoughts that I was having about my past actions or actions that I've taken in the past, and so the last thing I want to offer you here is, you know, I want you to really call out that specific lie and Bring up the truth about that situation under the circumstance. So, for example, going back to the example that I just gave about picking up my kids, right, you can now immediately call that out, and I mean I can.

Speaker 1: 15:14

I do this a lot now with a lot of the things that I, you know, struggle with or that I'm, you know, lacking, or maybe even not Up to where I want to be, and even, as you know, through this pregnancy right, Sometimes I want to wake up, how I used to wake up before 4, 30, 4, 45 at the latest and go to the gym and do all of these things. But because now I know that my body is changing, I am in a whole different sleep schedule and I'm adjusting, I have to remind myself, okay, first of all, no, I am not lazy to. It's not because I am Super tired or exhausted, it's because I actually am wanting to take, I am willing and Wanted to take time to really focus on my rest. And so when I can't really call out, you know, it's not because I'm lazy, it's not because I don't have anything to do, or it's not because my work isn't important or my working out or my prayer time isn't important. It's because in that in, in that day or in that moment, hey, I just want, I just decided to sleep in. It's that simple. Or Again, going back to the example that I gave earlier, it's not that I couldn't leave Earlier.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Is that I decided and made that choice to leave later because of this XYZ project or this meeting that came up, has nothing to do with my parenting, has nothing to do with how I've responded or acted in the past. It has a lot to do with the choice and decision that I made in that moment. And so, again, doing that and really being okay with having these judgmental thoughts, having these thoughts that are always going to come up, no matter what, no matter how much coaching you do, no matter how much education you get, no matter how much money you have in the bank, there will always be judgmental thoughts that come through your brain because, again, your brain is just trying to help you out, keep you safe, keeping you in this positive emotion instead of a negative emotion. No one wants to feel guilty or shame, or disappointment or anxiety, so our brain is just doing its thing. But now here's another thing that I wanna add and I don't have this in my notes, by the way, and the way it just came to mind, being okay, too, with taking this to prayer, taking this to God, and really asking yourself is this something that is of God? Is this something that God would want me to be focused on right now? And if the answer is no, then just allow it to come through.

Speaker 1: 17:47

There's nothing that you can do to block that thought from coming in. You don't wanna resist the thoughts that are coming in, because it's just how your brain has been wired on the thinking right. What you wanna do now is create different paths of wiring of what your mind has been so used to offering you. So, for example, like I said, these three steps. You want to be able to go through these three steps and continue to do this every single time you are feeling this whole judgmental peace, judgmental thoughts are coming up when all you're trying to do is go on about your day and not be hard on yourself. So if you feel like you are becoming really hard on yourself and you're just beating yourself up about things that happened months, maybe even years ago, this is the time for you to really go through these three steps.

Speaker 1: 18:50

And again, the first step is understand that this is normal of your brain to do this. This is your brain trying to keep you from feeling a negative emotion. And two, you wanna become aware of when it comes up the most, like when you're at work, when you are presenting something, when you are getting ready to do something new, when you are spending time with your kids, with your spouse, when you're going on a vacation like, are you feeling guilty for taking a vacation? Whenever that time is, you wanna become aware of when it happens, because it's something that you've already wired and trained your brain to do during this round time. And then you wanna call out that lie and really talk your way into the truth. Right? What is the truth about the situation?

Speaker 1: 19:40

And, like I gave the example earlier, no, I am not a terrible mother because I left work late. This is what I have to do at work. You know, something that needed to get done in order for me to spend time with my kids and not think about work, and not have to do work while my kids are in the tub or while my kids are eating dinner, and so things like that for you to refocus on what's really happening here and not allowing your brain to take you places like, oh well, look, there's something wrong with you. It looks like you're a terrible mom. It looks like you're just. You know you could be doing better, and then you become, you know, this individual that's just really hard on themselves. So this is what I wanna offer you Do these three steps whenever you're starting to feel as if you're just having, you know, to find faults, either about yourself, about others, about your situation that is causing all of this Disappointment, guilt, shame, even regret, or anger and anxiety.

Speaker 1: 20:46

So I hope that you do this, that you practice this and you continue to be aware of really what's happening when these Judgmental thoughts are coming in, about any action that you take in or any action that you have taken in the past, and more so, too, even if you haven't taken that action yet, your mind is gonna offer you so many things and so many Thoughts on you know one, why you should be doing this in the future, based on your past or even based on your current situation. So, again, I hope that you are able to do this exercise. I hope that you're able to really hone in on you know what these judgments are and really be more specific and be able to decipher really what it is that maybe keeping you there, maybe keeping you stuck, maybe keeping you from actually pursuing the things that you want to do. I hope that this is helpful. Please Let me know, send me an email you can go to hello at when you're a calm and Let me know how you're using this. You can also leave me a review. All you have to do is go to Apple podcast, scroll to the very bottom, let me know what you think and also if there's any other topic that you want me to touch on.

Speaker 1: 21:57

Alright, I hope that this blesses you and that you enjoy the rest of your week. Talk to you soon. Bye, hey, lady. If this podcast helped you, challenge you or inspired you in some way, please leave me a written review for the show on Apple podcast and share it with another military sister. Helping you integrate balance prioritization in a growth in your relationship with God is my ultimate calling. I'm so blessed that you were here. Please join us in the faith-led military women community on Facebook at bitly For slash beyond the military g rp. Again, it is bitly beyond the military g rp. All right, talk to you soon. Bye.