You Are a Judgment Machine

I am not negatively judging you for this! Judgment is a fact of life.

Mahalo for joining me again. Mahalo for being a person willing to read and think and have curiosity. Mahalo for caring and taking care of the things you care about. And if you, like me, struggle sometimes or often times with exactly how to adapt to changes, this oneʻs for you.

Last week I wrote about the somatic basis for taking ownership of what we care about and the outcomes of our choices. I concluded:

A habit of observing and owning our thoughts, beliefs, and actions is a powerful start towards being able to navigate to a new future.

We mostly experience ourselves as thinkers and actors, rarely as observers. My premise is that to change our thoughts and actions, to create more effective possibilities and outcomes in times when the old no longer works - we often need to change ourselves as observers. We need to take ownership of our observations, our judgments, and their consequences. We can assess whether they are effective or ineffective at creating and fulfilling our commitments. We can choose to act differently instead of letting outdated judgments or a mood of resignation run us. Let me go back to what I have learned from horses to explain that statement.

Long-ish time readers will remember that I am certified in Equine Guided Education through Ariana Strozzi Mazzucchiʻs SkyHorse Academy. I first encountered Arianaʻs work a decade before I began studying with her in 2010. As I described in this post, my first learning experience within her framework of horses as teachers came in the middle of a two-year management and leadership program. The brilliance of the exercise was that each of the participants saw themselves differently in a few moments with a horse. We became new observers of our patterns.

We were able to do something with our insights because the program had introduced us to new¹ distinctions around how to be effective in leading our own lives and inspiring and coordinating with other people around shared goals.² We had a framework for translating the fresh observations into new commitments and actions in support of them.

Although I have also studied and certified in other strands of the equine-guided or -assisted learning field, it was partly because of our shared background with those distinctions for effective coaching and mentoring that I found my community of practice with Ariana. We agree that the process of changing in order to achieve new outcomes starts with becoming a new observer of oneʻs self, others, and the world. That is true whether your goal is “merely” personal growth or to become more effective in the leadership roles you play in your job, family or community.

---

Photo by Sergey Semin on Unsplash

So what is an observer - and how do we get to know the observer we are, let alone become a different one?

I may have missed a step here. Some of us might need to first recognize that we are even an observer different than other observers! Do you believe we all see, hear, notice the same “objective reality” in any given situation? If so, this talk of how changing your observer can change the reality you experience and allow you to have different future possibilities might not make sense. So letʻs explore how our background of understanding and our observational practices influence what we actually perceive. Here is an easy uncontroversial example, where what we are observing is something we could agree as objective rather than subjective reality.

Remember when I broke my wrist? I had just finished a day of site visits for applicants seeking funding from the Stateʻs Legacy Land Conservation Program. I traveled that day with a fellow commissioner who is an expert on birds. At one point during the day he noticed a pair of birds in flight and identified the species - then explained to us how he could tell that one bird was mature and one was new to flying. I would not have “seen” that. Because he recognized a recently fledged bird, he had a new interpretation of the significance of the place we were visiting. He had evidence that the species nested there without seeing a nest. This commissioner and I had the same goal for the site visit: to assess its conservation value. But he came to it as a different observer, someone whose eyes are trained to see things mine do not and whose brain has filing cabinets full of information to interpret what he is seeing.

---

Sometimes creating a new observer relies on having new information. It is natural to update the observer we are in this way, making better interpretations of what we are seeing based upon information in our “file cabinets.” What is harder is to see the interpretations we make that are assessments rather than assertions. An assertion is a statement we can confirm against an external measure. For example, the temperature in this room right now is 75 degrees Fahrenheit. An assessment would be “It is too hot in here” or “It is perfectly comfortable in here.” Each is a judgment about the same observation. I am slim and run cold but my friend is having hot flashes. We have different interpretations leading to different actions. We are both “right” but will take different actions. Perhaps she will grab a fan or I will notice her perspiring and hand her one.

One might also say the thermometer is making a neutral observation.

To release myself from my automatic interpretations, I can begin by mimicking a thermometer. Observing what is there separate from my reaction or conclusion. That is what I mean by “neutral observation.”

Horses and humans are wired to be judgment machines - our survival as embodied beings depends on us being able to interpret what we observe. The goal of practicing neutral observation is not to stop us from making interpretations - it is merely to give us more freedom not to be stuck with our habitual interpretations.

When we practice neutral observation on ourselves consistently, we can easily recognize how our interpretations shape our mood, energy, and assessment of the situation and our possible responses. Understanding that we can shift our mood, energy and sense of possibilities by observing in fresh ways is a powerful generative and leadership skill. Even if is just for the sake of choosing how we create and lead our own best life.

More next week about the somatic practices and process of observing and changing the observer we are. See you back here then!

1. New to me as the dignified beginner I was then.

2. That mentor, Bob Dunham, co-wrote a book in 2022 on The Power of Owning Up, to which I owe a great debt in the refinement of my own thinking on this topic.