Don't Judge Yourself!

The other morning I got up and decided to meditate before I started my day. I don't meditate nearly as often as I would like to. And as I began and got into my meditation I caught myself doing something. I was thinking about how my meditation wasn't "good enough". That it needed to be a certain length and I could only have X amount of  thoughts veering off in one direction before they became too many and I had to sit there for at least 15 minutes and then I stopped myself with a realization. That I was judging my meditating. Instead of being happy with myself that I took the time, no matter how "long" or "short" I deemed it, to sit down and have time like that for myself I instead was focused on what wasn't good enough.
One of the major teachings of Jesus was not to judge others. I try (and sometimes fail) to never stand in judgement of another human being nor do I want to be judged by another. That is not our responsibility and it creates negative energy which is unhealthy. But it became clear to me that in not judging others we are also tasked with non SELF judgement. We can be so hard on ourselves and I would imagine most of the time we are not even aware of it.
I remember awhile back reading some wonderful emails from Richard Luck challenging people to listen to the way they talk to themselves. How do you talk to yourself when you feel like you haven't done well enough with something? Would you speak to a friend or family member that way? Chances are probably not.
So why do we continue judging ourselves? We don't need to. We are ALL enough. You, me and everyone you see. God made us that way. And we need to be gentle with ourselves. That's not to say we should not work hard or motivate ourselves, but also recognize when we are being too hard on ourselves and not be self-judgmental. I am going to put that into practice as often as I can!