One of the great challenges for so many people is the inner critic, that voice that constantly judges your every move, decision and thought. People beat themselves up on a regular basis, criticise themselves to the point of being afraid to live life and it sucks. Who enjoys that huh..

So the Question is how can you stop Judging Yourself ? judgement is something that we all hate, we hate being judged by others yet we are sometimes the greatest culprit. The first thing to recognise is that Islam encourages us to be introspective but it doesn’t encourage self demolition. There is always a solution and in this short discussion we will present reliance as complete alternative to judgement of oneself. 

If you love to listen you can watch / listen to the podcast where we go into this in detail.

Judgement day seems to be every day for some people.

Sometimes you can’t go through a day without being judged by someone, and it’s really awful because it just completely knocks your confidence, your self esteem is in the toilet and it totally drains us of all energy and zest for life.

Life can be very challenging at times and sometimes we just want someone to come along and tell us how to do it right. The funny things is that people always assume you’re doing ok, you’ve done well in your life and you’ve got this great life to be proud of.

They say stuff like ‘hey… look at you, if only I could have been like you’, or ‘wow… you’ve really done well, great family, great career or business, wow Allah’s really blessed you huh’.

All the while, you’re thinking ‘they so don’t understand my life, how much hard work it is just to keep it together’, ‘Allah says he doesn’t burden a soul more than it can bear, but I really feel like this is too much’.

Look sometimes people think things they would never say because they believe in Allah, and they absolutely love Allah and are grateful to Him (swt). However, the feeling of pressure, the feeling of being overburdened with life can really be troubling for the best of us.

Do you feel isolated and misunderstood?

It could very well be the case that every one else see’s you and see’s this great success but you certainly don’t feel it. You feel like you’re life is just being held together, just about..

In my coaching practice, I find this is a common thing for so many people. In fact, it’s something I personally suffered from for years. Where you strive hard, killing yourself to make your life happen the way you want it, always feeling like it’s never enough, that you are never enough.

This feeling of being judged, being overwhelmed by the shear intensity of life can be debilitating. It can zap the energy and enthusiasm out of life. No one likes to admit that they feel this way, especially if on the outside life looks great.

Over the years what I’ve seen is that it is so common, yet most people feel alone as if they are going through this and the whole world outside of them is doing ok. They feel that they are experiencing this and there is no way out. They turn in all directions trying to solve it, but they find little solace or short term fixes.

So here’s the good news…

You are not alone ( being judged)

That’s right, you are never alone. This feeling of being alone is a large part of the problem. It causes people to feel ‘no way out’ of their challenges. But I can guarantee you that there is always a way out. Allah swt says

“and whoever has Taqwa of Allah, He will make a way out for them”

Surat at-Talaq

Look that’s a promise from the One who created you and bought you into this world. You will find a way, always.  Even if you feel your local community sucks, they don’t actually help you in any way. Even if you feel you don’t have a support network, and feel completely socially isolated. Allah promises that he will give you a way out. That’s a guarantee.

So, here’s the thing, you need to look for that way. If you’ve tried and you’ve not found what you needed, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just means the things you tried didn’t solve your problems. So you have to try things you haven’t tried before. You have to look where you haven’t looked before.

Look as a coach, whenever I deal with this problem, I see one common factor playing out over and over again. We are always trying to look for a quick fix, no time investment, no need for me to do anything. It’s like we just want to go to the doctor and get a prescription for some medication that will suppress our problems so we can just get on with life the way it is.

So, here’s the bad news, what you’ve done up and till now may not have worked and maybe that’s why you’re still searching. Suppressants and life hacks don’t work long term, they only help you cope for a short time before your problems come back, and over time as you know it can get worse.

Reliance as an Alternative to Judging Yourself

Allah tells you that if you rely on Him, turn to Him, have hope in Him, then you will be provided with a way out. But look having hope means, going out and looking beyond your comfort zone. Relying on him means being a believe in the solution, and knowing that it must exist.

You can and will find a solution.. There is never a problem that is too large for Allah. He is the Most Compassionate and The Most Merciful. So even when you judge yourself for not being good enough, not being worthy enough, the mercy for Allah is so vast, the compassion so encompassing that you won’t be able to escape it.

In fact, you’ll find that it already exists in every area of your life. It’s just too difficult to see if when you are in so much pain.

The challenges in life come and go for every human being on this planet. No one goes without them, but people do keep themselves busy, keep themselves occupied with anything that will help them stay distracted from what is happening. That’s what we call ‘sticking your head in the sand’ like an ostrich, hoping that it will all go away.

Look you don’t need to do that, Allah is always there, always taking care of us. The challenges that are self-inflicted or inflicted by others don’t have to be your life. You can change it at any point, the door is always open.  Don’t give up, become resourceful, become daring and take a leap of faith. It’s your faith that will raise you above all of the challenges you face.

That faith will increase your chances of finding a solution quicker. If you’ve tried everything and nothing has worked, then I can tell you safely that if you haven’t found the solution, it means you haven’t tried everything.  Allah would never leave us without a solution.

So let me just take you back to the beginning of this article, Judgement is where we started. Judgement is something I see more than ever being a self-inflicted punishment for not being good enough, not knowing enough, not being smart enough to fix your challenges.

Feeling like your not Good enough

We persecute ourselves for not having enough, being enough and doing enough. If the problems disappeared you wouldn’t judge yourself. If the problems just went away you wouldn’t even look at yourself in that way. You’d be too focused on how great life is, enjoying all of your blessings. Oh yes, you have blessings in your life right now.

The feeling of not being enough, not being the person you want to be, comes from your own internal set of rules and expectations you have of yourself. But even that has a solution, there is nothing without a solution in this life.

The minute you start relying on Allah, you can stop relying on yourself. You can take life to new heights, new levels of success, new levels of contentment that you never thought possible. In the verse I mentioned Allah mentions whoever has Taqwa, and it’s important that you know that one of the components of Taqwa is hope.

Hope is knowing that Allah will give you a solution, it’s not a wish. It’s something that will transform your life, but you won’t find it till you stop relying on your self and start relying on the All-Powerful creator of you. That’s right, you and I are powerless to do anything without the support network provided to us by Allah.

So, I’ll leave you with one thing, you don’t have to judge yourself any longer and if you stop, then others will stop.