Freedom Friday- Stop Letting Judgement Control you! (Freedom Friday Throwback

Hello everybody and welcome once again to the unlearned podcast. I am your host with Abigail Smith, and today is once again Freedom Fridays, which is when me or me and one of my friends shares with you something that we've unlearned this week and how it has made us just a little bit more free. And for those of you who are just now tuning in to the unlearned podcast, we are all about helping you gain the courage to change your mind so that you can experience more freedom. And one of the ways that we experience more freedom is to unlearn stuff, and not just unlearned stuff every now and again, but you have to unlearn stuff constantly And every there's, every time you're unlearning something. There's always an opportunity to have a freer life, and I just believe that we're meant to live free. That that's why we were created And that is the way that life is meant to be. We shouldn't be bound in our minds, we shouldn't be bound in our hearts. We should be free and live the life that that I believe that God has given us to live. So one of the things that I've been unlearning here lately is unlearning this concept of judgment. So you know, being on a podcast and, kind of, my voice is out there a lot more than it's ever been before. And I find myself sometimes, even when I am in an interview or when I'm really kind of just talking to people, you know, and I'm being real about something, i find myself saying you know, oh, you know, don't judge me. You know, or you know I don't, you know, i'm just, i just want to give a disclaimer. Right, i'm giving all these disclaimers because I don't want to feel judged or looked at a certain way or whatever. And I find myself doing that because I don't want to get people the wrong impression. Right, and in that, you know, it's interesting, because when we think about a judge right, a judge is somebody who has the final say. You go before the judge in the courtroom. Whatever they say is what's going to happen. Whatever they say is final. And when we, when I give a disclaimer before sharing something that might be real or true about me, what I'm essentially saying is I want to make sure that this person doesn't exercise final judgment, but in doing that, i am actually giving them the power to even have final say over me, and they don't. When I give a disclaimer like that, i'm almost handing them over power that doesn't belong to them, and I think that it's important that we, as we're pursuing a life of freedom, understand what power people have and what they don't have, and there is no human being that has final say over your life. The only one that has final say over your life is your creator, is God. And so this idea of judgment I think we use it too loosely, and I also think we give people power that they don't deserve, and that's not real. And so, as I am learning how to, you know, be honest and more vulnerable and more open publicly on this platform, i have to remember that judgment really only belongs to God, and people have opinions, and that's okay. People will have their own way of thinking, and that's okay, but giving people the title of a judge is not something that they deserve. And, on the other hand, unlearning judgment in the sense of like as, as somebody who wants to live free, i do not possess that power. I don't have the power of final judgment on anyone, and I certainly don't have to revel in the dysfunction of other people in order to make myself feel more powerful. You know, as a judge, the power is given to them. It's not something that they have to take or fight for. They just have it, and so there's no need for them to make somebody else feel small in order for them to feel powerful. They just have power, and the only one that just has power Again, the power of the final say is God, and so I do not have to have the burden of making the final call in other people's lives. That's not my job. So judgment, i think, is something that we as individuals really decide how much it impacts us by making a decision not to give, not to give judging power to people who can't really possess it anyway. I don't know if that resonates with any of y'all. I know that again, lately it's been, it's been something that I feel I found myself doing more often is giving disclaimers for something I'm about to say or just for for being who I am, you know, for fear of any kind of you know retribution of words or thoughts or or whatever. But I have to stop doing that because it's not theirs to give, and when I give them that power, i'm giving them something they really don't deserve and can't really handle. That isn't fair. To put other people in the judging seat because they don't have that kind of capacity. We, as people, don't have the capacity to hold the burden to be a judge of other people. So let's unlearn that. Let's unlearn judgment and stop giving people power that they shouldn't have. All right, that's it. That's all I got. If you haven't been listening to the unlearning religion series, i encourage you to do it. I think it's going to be helpful and hopefully help you to gain courage to start your own journey of unlearning your religion, because that's part of freedom. A lot of us have been bound by certain things in our religious context and it's time to get free from that. And a lot of these stories, of these journeys of people that are on all walks of life, different experiences and, quite frankly, a lot of them have landed in different places I think they can give you some courage to do it on your own. All right, i will see y'all next time on Freedom Friday, and y'all have a great weekend, peace. Thank you once again for listening to the Unlearned Podcast. We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode. Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think. We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to unlearn together to move forward towards freedom. See you then.