Key Takeaways

• Recognize the areas that you’re judging yourself.
• Can you accept these or are you wanting to change?
• Both are completely reasonable, but you have to go at them from within yourself.
• With all passion, with all heart, and with a desire to do this because it’s going to allow you to find freedom.

 

Feeling like you need to be in better shape than you currently are in order to go to the gym is a pretty normal thought. But you don’t have to think that, and I can nearly guarantee that the other people in your gym aren’t thinking that about you. We all start somewhere, and for many people, that somewhere is just walking through that gym door.

 

The Chief Complaint: "I Need To Be In Better Shape To Go To The Gym"

I hear this thought so often, thinking that you need to be fitter than you are before you go to the gym. Let’s unpack this thought distortion in this episode. Because I guarantee that most people in that gym are more focused on what they’re doing to even notice what your base level of fitness is!

 

No One’s Looking at You at the Gym

Okay, first of all, we need to unpack these “should” statements you keep telling yourself. You should be thinner, you should be stronger, you should be more consistent. Let’s just stop this and look at why these “should” statements are actually causing your more harm than good.

Especially when it comes to the gym, I can pretty much guarantee that no one there is thinking about what YOU are doing at the gym. If they are, I hope you’re paying them as your Personal Trainer! But if someone else is judging you for you being at the gym, I can also guarantee that those thoughts say more about that person than they do about you.

This conversation focuses on how we can stop judging ourselves, because when we figure out that piece for ourselves, we will start judging others less, too.

 

How to Stop Judging People

It does take a lot of thought work to get there, but I want you to start believing that you are perfect as you are. I also need you to know that having these internal judgments is normal and you don’t need to feel ashamed for it. But you can absolutely start correcting these thoughts.

Say, for example, that someone is judging how you look at the gym. Those thoughts have come from that person’s own internal judgment of themselves. External judgment comes from a person’s own beliefs about themselves.

So how do you stop judging other people? You stop judging yourself. When you get to a place of peace with who you are and actively stop judging yourself, naturally you will stop judging other people, too.

 

Homework for Women Physicians

Where are you feeling resistance in your life? Where do you judge yourself the most harshly? Let me know in the comments on the episode page.

 

In This Episode 

• What the problem with “should” statements is [2:30]
• Why you should ignore anyone who actually IS judging you at the gym [9:15]
• What happens when you start to believe you’re perfect just as you are [11:30]
• Why we shouldn’t assume how others are judging us [23:30]
• How to stop judging other people [25:15]

 

Quotes

“Part of the solution to being able to overcome that constant feeling of ‘I’m being judged,’ is to be vulnerable, put yourself out there, do it again and again and again, and realize that nothing bad is going to happen.” [5:45]

“The less that we judge ourselves, the less we judge others, too. When we’re judging ourselves constantly, what that means is that we are more likely to judge other people. And our opinion for other people does not matter.” [13:12]

“Internally, how we’re talking to ourselves a lot of the time is how we are seeing the world. This is something we should not be embarrassed about, this is something we should not feel bad about. This is human nature and the way our brains work. The beautiful thing is that we can correct this.” [17:43]

“Because I’m not judging myself, I’m not assuming that she’s judging me either. This all starts with us, do you see?” [25:18]

 

Resources Mentioned

Check out the full episode page here

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Podcast production by the team at Counterweight Creative

 

Related Episodes

Episode 15: “I Am Exercising So Much And The Scale Is Going Up”

Episode 14: “I Am Having Difficulty Getting More Toned”

Episode 22: “I Don’t Know How To Feel My Feelings”