My first thought is that humans cannot permanently judge anyone; only God can. As someone who works with a variety of people as a mental health professional, I know that a lot of people will use the phrase don’t judge. I think what many people mean when they say this is that they don’t conclude others without them saying who they are. My first thought in learning to judge others is understanding myself. We learn judgment through our experiences, both with others and ourselves.” Unfortunately, there are not many absolutes in judgment. I can talk about red flags in determining if a person is your friend, or if a girl or woman is a good fit for you in marriage, but everything is so complex that there are no determined rules, but I find there are general rules. If we are talking about the signs of a true friendship, my first thought is that one needs to be one’s friend before one can be other people’s friends. I believe relationships have a lot of elements, and the first and most crucial element is knowing and trusting one’s self.

I will give some of my clinical observations of the signs of a true friend, they are perceived to be honest to you, they can understand what your emotions are like, and you can communicate well enough to know what they are saying. Some other good signs are that they are vulnerable to you about stuff that makes them look bad. And you can be open to them about who you truly are. For instance, if you can share all your mistakes at work and in your personal life, and they are still your friend and they listen to you that is a good sign they are a good friend. Another sign of a good friend is they don’t say how other people have it worse than you. I got the advice in the last two sentences from Jordan B Peterson, but it is an idea I believe in, too. I also believe some people are not from America and don’t fit the general rules I bring up. For instance, some people have issues with the English language so you may connect well with someone, but you don’t share the same language. I have another exception to the rule about how people should listen to you and not tell you how other people have a worse life than you. For instance, if a person is trying to tell you that other people may have harder lives than you because they want you to have perspective for educational purposes and you know they feel for your personal struggles, trust you deeply, and deeply care and admire you.

How do you know if a person likely deeply trusts, cares, and admires you? In the context of a mentor, usually, they will listen to you and reflect on what you say to help you feel heard. They will also show you that they care deeply about you by spending one-on-one quality time with you and offering a large amount of one-on-one mentor support. Another sign is that they share deeply personal things about themselves that could make them look bad as a person, and they learn from you and implement what they learn from you in their personal and professional life if it is relevant.

One of the most essential elements of judgment is to research the culture and country of the person you are talking to and find out what is different from your culture and theirs. Judgment is about fundamentally understanding the true intentions of the person and their way of expressing those intentions to best be able to see people for who they are. For instance, typically in the Philippines, if a friend offers to let you meet their family and spends dozens of hours every week asking you deep personal questions, that is a sign that the friend wants to marry you if they are the opposite sex of you. Another sign that a person wants to marry you is they share their intimate daily thoughts, like sexual, spiritual, relational, family, religious, political, and philosophical thoughts. The same can be accurate in America, but only sometimes; it can depend on the person’s age. Sometimes, youth can spend all day at a public school together and hang out with each other’s families every weekend.

One of the biggest takes about judging people accurately is paying more attention to their actions than their words. For instance, if a person says they believe Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior, look at if they live more by Jesus Christ’s principles than what they say they believe. However, sometimes people will believe in something passionately but won’t demonstrate it through their actions. Because if they did it could risk their life. For example, if someone were to say they would rather die than live a life based on more lies than truth, I don’t think this person needs to show their beliefs though their actions. What I mean is the person does not need to make their life predicated on lies and then kill themselves. If the person has excellent integrity overall, they don’t need to prove anything. I have shared my reflections on how I have learned to judge people more accurately, but there are so many more contexts I can share. For now, this is what I have.