This morning I caught myself feeling a little guilty for wanting to sit and read my amazing novel for 20 minutes while drinking a cup of coffee. And I realised that I would not have given myself ‘a hard time’ if I had read the news for 20 minutes or spent (wasted?) 20 minutes on social media.

I find this interesting... These little voices in my head that tell me what to do, what not to do, what is ‘accepted’ and what isn’t, what is considered ‘work’ and what is considered ‘pleasure’.

Because I’m wondering... how many times in a day do I deny myself the pleasure of reading, of doing a Sudoku, of sitting in the sun for 5 minutes, to play and laugh with the dogs when they are in a silly mood?

How many times a day do I judge myself on what I do, and also on what I don’t do? What do I consider ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and where do these judgements come from?

Most of these ‘rules’ that we live by are years or decades old – we take on many of our beliefs before the age of 7, and we continue to develop our belief system throughout our lives. A lot of what we have come to believe functions on auto-pilot: without being aware our beliefs influence what we do, think, feel, and how we respond to the people around us. Because we don’t only judge ourselves, we see other people through the same framework of beliefs and if we are not aware of what we actually believe then we judge people on their words and behaviours unnecessarily.

How we perceive ourselves and the people around us, based on our (mostly unconscious) beliefs influences our communication to a great extent. Our judgements come through in our responses to situations and what is being said, as we filter what we hear though our unconscious framework of beliefs.

In order to be less judgmental towards yourself and others it helps to pick up on little moments of awareness throughout your days, like this morning when I realised I felt a little guilty for wanting to do something nice for myself for 20 minutes. If I don’t allow myself to sit and read (thinking that it is a ‘waste of my valuable time’) then I will also be more likely to judge other people for doing something that they might consider a fun thing to do while they could be doing something else (more work, clear the dishes, take the dogs out, fix an appliance that broke a while ago). If I’m not aware of my inner judgments then my frustration is likely to come through in my tone of voice, which says more about me than about the other person!

So today I’m going to go with my wish and desire to sit and read for 20 minutes while having a cup of coffee. Just because I can. And I’m going to be really aware today to not judge people on doing something nice for themselves too. After all, we all deserve some ‘guilty pleasures’ (and enjoy them!).

Tell me.... What will be your ‘guilty pleasure’ today? I hope you fully enjoy it!

Have a great day,
Renny