How to rewire the judge and jury inside your brain

When it comes to living healthy lifestyles, many people’s experience is like driving with the parking brake on—they may be doing some things that support good health while routinely doing other things that work against it.

My client, Janice, has her parking brake on. She does three training sessions with me weekly where she works hard and likes to jokingly complain about how much she’s sweating. Her parking brake is common: consuming high-calorie foods and diet sodas daily.

In the years I’ve known her, modifying her nutrition to any degree has been off-limits. She enjoys rich foods and sweets, but they’re also a coping mechanism to ease the pain of unresolved issues and self-acceptance struggles. These foods provide her short-term comfort, but the consequences are elevated body fat and a recent diagnosis of prediabetes and high cholesterol. Despite this, her dietary habits are unchanged.

At the start of a recent session, Janice said, “I didn’t do cardio over the weekend like I said I would, though I binge-watched a show with some ice cream bars.” I’ve learned that attempting to explore this behavior, even from a place of gentle curiosity, triggers her defenses. But because I care about her health and well-being, I felt some frustration and judgment about her parking brake remaining firmly set.

So, as Janice warmed up on an exercise bike, I stepped back and took a long breath, reflecting on why she’s still coming to me after all these years. Watching her pedal, I reminded myself that beyond increasing her strength and flexibility, she benefits from the safe, nonjudgmental space I’ve provided, and she also gets to leave each session feeling empowered and cared for instead of "not good enough."

After Janice’s session, I accepted the truth that I’m not in the business of judging the choices she (or anyone else) makes, but I can control my frustration and judgmental tendencies. By sitting with that realization, my frustration eased and I felt more relaxed—I even felt liberated from the fear that Janice’s choices might lead to her diminished health.

Reframing our perception of someone we’re judging is not always easy, but try we must if we want to feel good internally and mentally. This includes reframing the judging we do of ourselves. One place to start is by replacing judgmental thoughts with more positive ones. Doing so will stop your judgmental thoughts and, with enough practice, will rewire your brain to be more chill about how others choose to live their lives. Here are three examples I can leave you with to get you started:

Example 1: Change “That guy's a jerk,” to “They may be having a rough day.”

Example 2: Replace “This is too tough, I’ll never figure it out,” with “I don’t understand it yet, but I’ll keep working at it.”

Example 3: Substitute “He must not care much about himself with that behavior,” with “He has his struggles, as we all do.”

I’m curious to learn if you’ve faced a Janice-type situation where someone’s well-being mattered to you and their actions worked against it. What approach did you take, and what was the outcome? I welcome your thoughts.