I just had a conversation with someone who was convinced that their opinion was a fact. I have recently been learning to notice the difference between descriptions and evaluations helping me to understand how we habitually position our thoughts in the external world. Sometimes we unknowingly weave our thoughts so pervasively into our world that the resulting construct can have enormous affects on us.

Descriptions are words linked directly to the observable features of an object or event, and remain features despite your interaction with them. For example:

• I am sitting on a plastic chair.
• I am feeling nervous and my voice has gone high pitched.
• My colleague is speaking very loudly on the phone.

Evaluations are words linked to your reactions to objects or events, like comparisons such as “good” or “bad”, “like” or “dislike”, “fair” or “unfair”, “rude” or “polite” and so on. Evaluations are based on your interaction with objects, events, thoughts, feelings and sensations. For example:

I am sitting on a good chair.

(your subjective evaluation of your interaction with the chair is good, not the chair. Someone else may have a different experience of the same chair.)

These nerves are unbearable.

(your perception of your interaction with the nerves is unbearable, not the nerves. In any case how could you still be experiencing them if they were unbearable?)

My colleague is being rude for speaking so loudly.

(rude is your evaluation of the interaction with your colleague speaking loudly. What’s rude to one person, may not be rude to another.)

Being able to distinguish between descriptions and evaluations allows you the freedom to recognize when your mind is noticing your actual experience, and when it is making its own judgments on that experience.

Ask yourself how much of your stress comes from mistaking evaluations for descriptions? Over the coming week examine how you have habitually woven evaluations into your descriptive repertoires.