Cast the First Stone 🪨
Conscious leaders learn to rise above judgment
I recently saw an article about a celebrity who, for fun, had posted a photo of their child in the car with them and was then excoriated by social media followers. The celebrity’s offense? Apparently they hadn’t properly strapped their child in the car seat and were subjected to all sorts of ridicule and harsh judgment for their mistake.
Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence in society nowadays. Cancel culture and social media shaming have become part of our everyday lives. Anyone can tweet a comment or photo and face a barrage of criticism. Perhaps the tweet or post is in poor taste or maybe the individual did do something that could have been done better. But the spirit of the responses isn’t to help the person or enhance their consciousness, but to condemn and judge.
These types of attack speak volumes about the attackers and their own level of consciousness. Maybe it makes them feel important to judge and make others wrong. Maybe they feel that by condemning others they are upholding their own subjective standards of right versus wrong.
Either way, this behavior evidences low consciousness and it’s something conscious leaders can help change. Conscious leaders work on reducing their level of judgement. In fact, by reducing judgment, we can live a life of greater happiness, opportunity, and connection.
There is a story in the Bible that captures the essence of overcoming judgment and increasing consciousness. In the story, Jesus is approached by Pharisees with a woman accused of committing adultery. They tell Jesus that under the law the woman should be stoned, and ask if he agrees.
Wisely, Jesus avoids participating in their judgement by responding, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” The story concludes, “And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one…”
Jesus displayed the highest level of consciousness in this story. He did not judge and even challenged those around him to consider their own culpability. His challenge impacted them to such a degree that their conscience convicted them about their judgment.
As a conscious leader, consider how you can rise above the petty judgments that plague social media and so many daily interactions. Judgement puts us in a framework of fear, stress, separation, anger, right versus wrong, black versus white, win versus lose. Those are polarizing paradigms that limit our perspective and keep us in a constant battle against ourselves and others.
We have the opportunity as conscious leaders to engage in non-judgement. This means seeing life as a wonderful experience where we constantly learn and grow. When we see others making a different choice, we can share an opinion, but always with curiosity and love, and in a spirit of helping them see a different perspective that could help them grow as well.
Work happy. Live happy. BE happy.
Meredith
The way we work and build teams is rapidly changing. Leaders often feel unprepared to navigate the transition. As a conscious leadership coach, consultant and communicator, Meredith helps leaders and their teams create new ways of working and relating so they can prepare for the future by consciously co-creating it.
Contact her to develop your conscious leadership and transform your organization into the workplace of the future.
You can support my work developing more conscious leadership in the world by investing in a paid subscription to this newsletter. Upgrade your subscription today!
Connect with Meredith on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for content related to these topics.