How do we not judge ourselves?

Since childhood, we are conditioned to judge everything, including ourselves. We put ourselves on high pedestals and then when we find the real us and the person on the pedestal in conflict with each other, it gives rise to confusion and low self-esteem—something which is not our doing, and we are not entirely responsible for it.

When a child is growing up, and when he says ‘mama’, the parents are overjoyed and proclaim their child to be a genius. The child starts going to school and finds out that every other child can also say ‘mama’, and suddenly he doesn’t feel like a genius anymore. It is the parents’ conditioning—they put their children on a high pedestal, resulting in the child putting himself on a pedestal.

For everything, we feel that we can do better than the others, if given a chance. For example, I could have run the fastest in the race if I had the correct shoes. This goes on and on, and we put ourselves on pedestals, find excuses for why we aren’t actually there, and eventually one day it hits us in our faces that we are failures to our own expectations.

Because we have expectations from ourselves, we put ourselves in a box to fulfil those expectations. When those expectations are not fulfilled, we begin to feel like failures. Why should we feel so? We don’t have to be a failure to our own expectations.

A winner cannot be a winner unless there is a loser. So the loser makes the winner win. Can I say I am a leader if there is no one to follow me? So the followers make the leader. The patients make the doctor. So others make us what we are. Let us not think that we are great achievers and climb onto some pedestal, and then feel bad when we can’t get there.

Rather than judging ourselves, let us simply be!