Deafening voices in my head

It has been over a year since I have been having trouble falling asleep. I think too much and my thoughts just snowball and keep me up. In addition to that, I have noticed off late that I have a hard time listening to others and paying attention to what they are saying -- my own internal thoughts are completely monopolizing my brain's central processing unit. Moreover, it is not enough that I am not listening, I cannot stop myself from trying to speak over them and letting them know of my thoughts. And then I made the observation that I have stopped posting on my blog -- the place where I can vent my unending stream of consciousness.

My hope is that if I can speak out my thoughts here, I can clear my head and have a good night's sleep with the added advantage that now my mind is making some space (hopefully) to listen to what other's have to say. Hopefully I can cultivate and continue this habit and get a good night's sleep.....

Lately, a thought has been occupying my head. Some smart said ``Make a decision, not a judgement''. Even though it was said in the context of grading assignments/tests submitted by students for any course, I feel that something related to that can be applicable to many things in my life. For grading, I think it implies that I should just (objectively) decide whether I should deduct points or not, not make a judgement of whether the student is dumb or smart and hence deserves the points or not. 

But sometimes the decisions are motivated by judgement, so maybe the advice I take away is that I should just make my decision, and not judge myself or judge others what decisions they take. Some things that come to mind are:

1. Decide to recycle, but do not judge people who still throw plastic in the garbage
2. Decide to ride a bike to work, but do not judge people who drive to work
3. Decide to be aware of what is happening all around the world, but do not judge people who choose to not stay on the top of everything
4. Decide to get a doctorate, but do not judge people to who got an MBA
5. Decide to NOT text and drive, but do not judge people who do
6. Decide to marry and have kids, but do not judge people who do not marry or have kids
7. Decide to stay unmarried and without kids, but do not judge people who do marry and have kids.

The list could go on and is not at all exhaustive of all the decisions/judgement that goes on in my head. Moreover, while judgement is not appropriate for people who do something different from your decision, a positive judgement for those who comply with your decision is equally mistaken in my opinion. While I do want to make the right decision (for some definition of right), I am having a hard time training myself to stop the judgement in my head. Even the judgement where you congratulate yourself for making the ``right'' decision should be avoided. I feel there are two main reasons to stop the judgement:

• Firstly, all this judgement mostly causes anguish to you and generated negative emotions in you without affecting the ``other people'' decision in any way -- in fact if you try to convince these ``others'' to see things your ``right'' way with all these negative feelings within you, it might be hard to get any success.
• Secondly, while you congratulate yourself for the extra effort you undertake by making the ``right'' decision, the (generally negative) judgement of others without any supporting real (observable) punishment of the others might just start convincing your subconscious to not care enough to make your extra effort. And this just pushes you towards making the same ``wrong'' decision as the ``others''.

I guess the best plan is to leave the judgement to the legal system and just make decisions. So I shall try to incorporate the lack of judgement in my life. While it is not directly applicable (maybe it is), I think Baz Luhrmann spoke of this in his Sunscreen song when he said ``what ever you do, do not congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either -- your choices are half chances, so are everybody else's.'' (Incidentally, for some reason, the Dean at my college of computing, Zvi Galil, decided to recite this Sunscreen song when he was a keynote at the convocation at the University of Waterloo). 

Hopefully that made enough space in my head for tonight's sleep. And here's to hoping that I will post soon. If I do, I am pretty sure it will be about The Dark Knight Rises.