Observation Without judgment

(Just to make a note, I've decided to entitle each of these journal entries by category, i.e. by what chapter in the NVC book inspired my musings.)

Observation without judgment.... wow -- this one has been one of the most intensely useful and transformative topics for me to consider. For the sake of this post, I'll try to pick one short point to ponder -- it's late, I have a cold, and I've taken NyQuil, so we'll see how this goes.

I am noting how much of my perception of reality is colored by my categorization of things or events as "good" or "bad." I've been working on this area for some years, realizing that there is often no reason to plop everything into One Category or Another, yet I still find myself doing it sometimes. One point which struck me profoundly about practicing NVC was how many of my "problems" disappeared as if by magic as soon as I transformed my evaluative judgments int true observations.

For instance, I found myself earlier internally bemoaning how "terrible" I felt, noting the "awful" sensations in my throat, the "horrible" stuffiness in my nose, and the "annoying" pain in my back. I noted myself doing this, and decided to practice observing without judgment instead:

My body is experiencing tiredness.
My throat is experiencing pain.
My right sinus passages are blocked with mucus.
There is muscle tension in my lower back.

Two things occurred when I made this verbal transition:

1) The "heavy feeling" in my mind and body disappeared. Yes, I was still experiencing the same physical symptoms as before, but suddenly they didn't feel so overpowering any more. I think this came about for two reasons:

a) The sensations were put into concrete perspective rather than the ambiguous language of judgment. (Words like "terrible" and "awful" aren't really all that descriptive if I think about it.)

b) Once the sensations in my body were acknowledged for what they truly were, it was like my body was able to release some of the intensity of the sensations, sort of like the way an emotion often calms once it has been acknowledged and empathized with.

Which leads to the second shift that occurred with this verbal transition...

2) I was able to give myself genuine empathy for how I was feeling. Just as I've found it easier to do that when I name my emotional feelings, I found it likewise to be the case with my physical sensations.

I feel happy to notice self-empathy coming so easily and unbidden since that is an area I have traditionally struggled with. Also, I didn't *try* or plan to give myself empathy -- it just sort of happened. So, here it is again -- one more life-affirming reason to observe events, feelings and sensations without judgment.

Which leads to one of my current decisions / experiments -- I am going to attempt to strike particular words from my vocabulary for a while. Not forever -- perhaps someday I can use those words from a more neutral perspective -- but for now these words have so many "push-button" connotations to me they are effectively meaningless, or at least not particularly accurately descriptive.

The first two words are "good" and "bad." Even "positive" and "negative" are a bit questionable to me right now..... to adopt NVC terminology, perhaps "life-affirming" and "life-alienating" are more to the point.

Then there are the words which are ultimately just other versions of "good" and "bad," though for my purposes I'm more interested in setting aside the more "negatively skewed" words. And it isn't that I believe I need to totally strike them from my list of potential words, just that I think I would be better served by limiting their use, noting when I use them and checking whether or not those words are even truly descriptive of my present situation.

For instance, I find my internal dialog labeling objects or events, but then when I check and ask myself, "Do I really think that X is terrible?" I find that the answer is often "No." It's like I've been conditioned to believe that certain situations are negative by nature, even though I intellectually know that not to be the case. (There is nothing terrible but that thinking makes it so.)

I enjoy my life so much more without the boxes of "good" and "bad." Without those boxes experience has the ability to be more expansive, richer, more textured, and from what I've found, often more enjoyable. I have discovered myself making life-alienating judgments about situations that, once I dropped the judgment and just observed it for what it was, suddenly became neutral or even enjoyable experiences.

It is quite a large pay-off for taking ten seconds out of my conditioned thought stream to ask myself to observe the situation without judging it. If I really think it's useful, I can always judge it later.