If you often find yourself feeling more inclined to judging people based on your own values, standards, wishes or needs, then that is a sure indication that you have very little or no compassion at all towards them. It's impossible to judge someone whose story you don’t know. When you understand why someone behaves the way they do, you will feel compassion towards them instead of judging them. When we judge someone, we are making a lot of assumptions.
Take for instance a simple judgment: "She should be on time". But do you really know if something unavoidable happened to prevent her from being on time? Do you really know if being on time is an important standard for her? Do you really know if her inner guidance was keeping her from a certain intersection at a certain time? Do you really know what lessons she is learning in her life by being late? The bottom line is that you don't know, you never really know what someone else's path in life involves.
So suspend your judgment: It's just your opinion. Having compassion does not mean that you have to condone someone's hurtful behaviour, but it does mean that you don't judge the person. So the next time you find yourself judging someone, take the judgmental thought and ask yourself; is that true? Can you know with absolute certainty that it is true? If you're not in that other person's skin the answer has to be-No, it's not true.