Your yardstick.

I try not to let insignificant things get to me very often but I felt very put out by something that was said to me last week. I just couldn’t shake it. I was at home while my wife and kiddos were down in Colorado celebrating a wedding. I wanted to be there and felt horrible that I couldn’t. With the nuptials being on a Sunday evening, there was no way I could attend, drive back to Wyoming after midnight, get home at 4:00 a.m., and be productive for one of the busiest days of the year. Plus, it was the grand opening of our brand new Veteran Resource Center. Because I was home that weekend, I decided to go hunting on Saturday and posted about my day on social media. It was hinted that I shouldn’t be posting about my hunting trip while my family was down at a wedding without me. I perceived that as someone saying I was not valuing my family by not being in attendance at the wedding and going hunting instead. This was far from the truth.

After taking some time to calm down, I decided if I was going to get out of my own head, I was going to have to take my own advice from the 30 blogs I have written this past year and a half. Even though I didn’t want to, I needed to be deliberate in walking in someone else’s shoes. I needed to assume that 99% of people in this world are good with the right intentions. I then realized this perspective might not have been a judgment of my values. Maybe I am just a likable guy and my presence was missed at this family get-together.

Either way, I don’t care who you are, we all spend time judging others, but that judgment is not malicious more often than not. There is a reason we sometimes spend more time than we probably should judging people. Subconsciously, the way you measure yourself is how you measure others, and how you assume others measure you. The yardstick we use for ourselves is the yardstick we use for everyone else.

• If you measure your life by how much you’ve experienced and where you have traveled, then you will measure other people by the same standard. If they enjoy routine and prefer to stay home, then you will judge them as unambitious and lazy, regardless of what their aspirations really are.
• If you measure your life by your family relationships, then you will measure others by the same standard, how close their family is to them. If they’re distant from their family or don’t call home enough, you’ll judge them as irresponsible, or ungrateful.
• If you believe that you’re a hard worker and have earned everything you have, then you will believe that everyone else earned what they have. If they have nothing, it’s because they earned nothing.
• If you believe that you’re victimized by society and deserve justice, then you will believe that others are victims of society and deserve justice as well.
• If you believe your value comes from faith in a higher power, then you will view others by their faith (or lack of faith) in a higher power.
• If you measure yourself by your intellect and use of reason, then you will judge others through the same lens.

This is why atheists try to logically argue about something that has nothing to do with logic. It’s why racists often claim that everyone else is racist too. This is why people who are entrepreneurs tend to think that everyone else should be an entrepreneur as well or why people who work a comfortable job with a steady paycheck, think financial risk-takers are irresponsible.

If you take the time really understand the lens you view the world with and can recognize the yardstick you use to measure others, you are more apt to turn that judgment back on yourself.

Confucius said, “a great man is hard on himself; a small man is hard on others”. We should all take that statement to heart.

One of the keys to turning our subconscious judgment into productive growth is to first recognize how we measure ourselves. Then recognize that everyone has their own metric. More than likely, that metric is likely not going to be the same as ours. Be okay with that.