I just came from Planet Fitness…the Judgment Free Zone. And on the drive home, I started thinking about those words. Is there actually such a thing? Not a judgment-free gym. A judgment-free anything. Because no matter where you go, the gym, the coffee shop, the grocery store, Walmart, work, church, a restaurant, someone is looking at someone else and forming an opinion.
Too fat. Too skinny. Too old. Too young. Too bald. Too feminine. Too masculine. Too many muscles. Not enough muscles. Too much makeup. Not enough makeup. Too many tattoos. Bad clothes. Expensive clothes. Big nose. Bad teeth. Cheap shoes. Nice car. Junk car. Too loud. Too quiet.
And all of this can happen before anyone says hello.
We Write the Story Before We Know the Person
That’s the strange thing about judgment. We don’t need much information. Sometimes we don’t need any information. Give us ten seconds and a visual inspection, and the human mind can construct an entire biography about someone we’ve never met.
The overweight person at the gym must be lazy. Except maybe they’ve already lost 100 pounds. The skinny person must never eat. Except maybe they’re recovering from an illness. The guy with enormous muscles must be obsessed with himself. Except maybe the gym became the place he went after losing someone he loved because lifting weights was easier than sitting home alone with his grief. The woman wearing inexpensive clothes must not have much money. Maybe she has a doctorate and simply doesn’t care what you think about her shirt. The guy driving the twenty-year-old car must be broke. Maybe the car is paid off, his house is paid off, and he has more money in the bank than the person judging him from inside a $70,000 vehicle with an eight-year loan.
We don’t know. That’s the point. We see the cover and convince ourselves we’ve read the book.
The Same Person Is Judged Differently
There’s another problem with judgment. It isn’t even consistent. Take one person and put them in the middle of a crowded room. One person thinks they’re attractive. Another thinks they’re unattractive. Someone thinks they’re intimidating. Someone else thinks they’re confident. One person thinks they’re too muscular. Another wishes they had their physique. Someone notices their clothes and thinks they’re underdressed. Someone else wishes they could afford what they’re wearing. One person sees confidence. Another sees arrogance. One sees quietness. Another sees insecurity.
Same person. Same room. Same moment. Completely different judgments. Which raises an interesting question: If ten people can look at the same person and reach ten different conclusions, how reliable were any of those conclusions to begin with?
We All Do It
It’s easy to read something like this and immediately think about judgmental people. Yeah. People really need to stop doing that. Except I’m talking about you. And me. All of us. I do it. You do it. We notice people. We categorize them. We form first impressions.
Some of that happens so quickly that we may not even consciously realize we’re doing it. The issue isn’t necessarily that an initial thought crossed our minds. The issue is what happens next. Do we turn an observation into a conclusion? Do we turn a conclusion into a story? And then do we treat that person differently because of the story we invented?
That’s where judgment becomes something more consequential. Because the person standing twenty feet away from you may be nothing like the character you just created in your head.
Everyone Is Carrying Something You Cannot See
That person walking slowly through the grocery store may be recovering from surgery. The cashier who doesn’t seem particularly friendly may have gotten terrible news before starting their shift. The person sitting alone at the coffee shop may be lonely. Or maybe they’re enjoying the only peaceful hour they’ll have all week.
The person who looks successful may be drowning in debt. The person who looks broke may be perfectly content. The woman smiling at everyone may cry when she gets home. The man who looks intimidating may be the gentlest person in the building. The person who seems distracted may be wondering how they’re going to pay rent. The person who looks like they have everything together may be barely holding it together.
You simply don’t know. There are entire lives taking place around us that we know absolutely nothing about.
Every stranger you pass has memories you haven’t heard, losses you haven’t witnessed, fears they haven’t told you about, people they love, people they miss, mistakes they regret, victories you’re unaware of, and battles they may never tell anyone they’re fighting.
And we think we understand them because we looked at them for six seconds.
The Harshest Judge May Be the One in the Mirror
But there is another person judging us every day. Ourselves. And sometimes that person is far more ruthless than anyone standing across the room. We are our own worst critics because we know exactly where to look. We know the ten pounds we gained. We know the hair that’s getting thinner. We know the wrinkle that wasn’t there five years ago. We know the scar. The crooked tooth. The part of our body we don’t like. The career that didn’t go according to plan. The relationship that failed. The bank account that isn’t where we thought it would be. The accomplishment we haven’t reached. The mistake nobody else remembers but we still replay.
We find the things other people may never even notice and amplify them as though they’re displayed on a billboard above our heads. Then we walk into a room assuming everyone else is reading the billboard. They noticed. They’re looking at me. They know. They’re judging me. Maybe they aren’t. Maybe they’re standing ten feet away worrying about their own billboard.
That’s one of the strange ironies of being human. A room can be filled with people who are simultaneously judging themselves while worrying that everyone else is judging them, while also subconsciously judging others. It seems chaotic, and it is. The person worried about their weight is standing beside someone worried about their age. The person worried about getting older is standing beside someone worried about their hair. The person worried about their clothes is standing beside someone worried about their career.
And everyone thinks everyone else noticed.
Honesty Doesn’t Require Self-Condemnation
This is where honesty becomes important. Honesty isn’t looking in the mirror and pretending something isn’t there. If you’ve gained weight, you’ve gained weight. If you’re getting older, you’re getting older. If your hair is disappearing, it’s disappearing. If you’ve made mistakes, you’ve made mistakes. If there’s something about yourself you want to improve, acknowledge it.
That’s honesty. But honesty and condemnation are not the same thing.
Honesty allows us to recognize what is real. Acceptance allows us to live with what is real. Neither requires us to project our insecurities onto everyone around us.
We can recognize something about ourselves without allowing it to determine our value. And we can work to change something without hating ourselves until we do. That’s an important distinction. Because sometimes the judgment we think we’re receiving from the world is actually judgment we’re carrying into the world ourselves.
We’re projecting our own insecurities onto strangers and then responding to opinions they may never have had. Perhaps one of the most liberating things we can learn is that not everyone is thinking about us nearly as much as we imagine they are.
They’re busy being human too.
Maybe There Are No Judgment-Free Zones
Perhaps a truly judgment-free place doesn’t exist. Put enough human beings together and somebody is eventually going to have an opinion about somebody else. But perhaps a judgment-free person can exist. Or at least someone who tries to become one.
Someone who understands that a first impression is not a complete story. Someone willing to replace assumption with curiosity. Someone who can see another human being without immediately assigning value to them. Someone who understands that different doesn’t mean inferior. Someone who remembers that the stranger standing beside them has lived an entire lifetime they know nothing about.
And maybe that’s where the idea of a Judgment Free Zone actually becomes meaningful. It doesn’t have to be a building. You can become one.
You can become the person around whom someone doesn’t have to worry about being too fat, too skinny, too old, too poor, too awkward, too different, too masculine, too feminine, too successful, or not successful enough.
You can become the person who allows another human being to simply be a human being. You may not always get to choose the first thought that enters your mind when you see someone. But you get to choose what happens after it. You get to choose whether you turn that thought into a judgment. You get to choose whether you turn that judgment into a story. You get to choose whether your own insecurities become assumptions about what everyone else thinks of you.
And most importantly, you get to choose how you treat the person standing in front of you. Maybe the world will never truly become a Judgment Free Zone. But the little piece of it surrounding you can. You get to choose.
The Journey Doesn’t End Here
Transformation rarely happens in one dramatic moment. It happens through the choices we make every day, how honestly we see ourselves, how we treat the people around us, how we respond to adversity, and what we choose to do next.
Those ideas are at the heart of Finding Your Transformative Life and the larger Transformative Life journey of Becoming, Connecting, and Influencing.
Continue the journey:
Read Finding Your Transformative Life — Digital Edition → Books – Troy P Zehnder
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Becoming. Connecting. Influencing.
You get to choose.
