Don’t praise and don’t condemn. Try to stay in neutrality as much as you possibly can. Not in a contrived way, but really aim to not jump to or arrive at any conclusions. Be conclusion-free.
Praise comes with expectation. Condemnation comes with grievance. Praise is uplifting someone – raising them above the rest. Putting them on a pedestal where they’re bound to fall.
Condemnation is pushing them down. Concluding their wrong-ness is eternal. Both are limitations, caging others in either with perfection or utter malice – no middle ground. Both limiting – to yourself and limiting to the other.
Condemnation is a non-acceptance at its root, a rejection of the other. It comes with a sense of dullness and monotony – endless time. The preciousness and never-to-be-repeated nature of things becomes hidden when you start living from a place of condemning others and judging them.
Both praise and condemnation carry a judgment. And judgment limits your ability to let things filter through you. Where you can find hidden gems in what you had previously condemned and unexpected surprises in that which you had previously praised.