How We Judge Others is How We Judge Ourselves

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Mark Manson
This article was originally published on January 9, 2014, by Mark Manson

Mark Manson is the author of Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope.

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Months ago, I wrote an article about the ways that we choose to measure the value of our own lives. Some of us measure our life through money and accolades. Others measure it through beauty and popularity. Others measure it through family and relationships. Others measure it through service and good deeds.

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In that article, I wrote that it’s important to measure ourselves by our own internal metrics as much as possible. The more external our metrics for our own value and self-worth, the more we screw everything up for ourselves.

But there’s more.

The way you measure yourself is how you measure others, and how you assume others measure you.

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 deadbeats, ungrateful or irresponsible, regardless of their lives or their history.

If you measure your life by how much fun and partying you can have, then you will measure others by the same standard – how much fun and partying they have. If they prefer to stay home and watch Star Trek: Next Generation reruns every weekend, you’ll judge them as inhibited, scared of the world, lame and soulless, regardless of their personality or needs.

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The yardstick we use for ourselves is the yardstick we use for the world.

If we believe that we’re hard workers and we earned everything we have, then we will believe that everyone else earned what they have. And if they have nothing, it’s because they earned nothing.

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Many of us adopt our own internal yardsticks not through conscious choice but through the shaming we’re subjected to. I love the quote, “Everyone is either trying to prove or disprove who they were in high school,” because for many of us, our yardsticks are defined by how people viewed us growing up. We develop a fixation in one area of our lives because it’s the area which we felt people judged us the most. The high school cheerleader who is afraid to lose her looks as an adult. The poor kid obsessed with becoming rich. The loser who wants to throw the biggest parties. The slacker who wants to prove to everyone how smart he is.

A big part of our development is to recognize our own fixation, to recognize how we measure ourselves and consciously choose our metric for ourselves.

But another big part of development is to recognize that everyone has their own metric. And that metric is likely not going to be the same as ours. And that’s (usually) fine. Most metrics people choose are fine. Even if they’re not the same metrics you would choose for yourself.

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You may not accept a person’s ideas or behaviors.

But you must accept that you cannot change a person’s values for them. Just as we must choose our own measurement by ourselves and for ourselves. They must do it by themselves and for themselves.