Blessing and Gratitude...

Here is a suggestion for building compassion and releasing judgmental and negative thoughts.   First you must learn to recognize when you react in judgement and recognize when you are having negative thoughts.  It is fairly easy to know when you are being judgmental.  Often there are certain types of people, certain behaviors that we notice that trigger these judgements.   Negative thinking in general is more difficult to recognize because we do it so often.   Self criticism is a big one.  “That was stupid”, I’m so dumb sometimes”, or things like... ‘arthritis runs in the family’, “Our family is prone to fits of depression”.?
Practice noticing when you do these things.  Practice till you can recognize when you start to say and think negative things.    Now that you realize you are doing something judgmental or coming up with a negative thought step in to stop it.  Therapists used to have suggestions for thought stopping.  They may still use these.  They would suggest you say out loud a very emphatic “stop”.   Now this might work well for when you are alone but could be a bit embarrassing if you were among a group of people.  Another that they suggested is to wear a rubber band on your wrist and when you realize you are unable to stop thoughts feeding into your mind, you stretch the rubber band and sting yourself with it.  
Try this instead.  If you happen to see someone on the street that you know triggers your judgement make a choice to switch your thought to a blessing.  Under your breath or in your thoughts simply say ‘bless you’.  Using just this you will soon find yourself doing more blessing than judging.  But now combine that blessing with gratitude.   Bless the person your see and add a thank you to the universe.  One thing to avoid in this is saying to yourself “I am grateful I am not like that person”  however you can express your gratitude that you have a home, that its a beautiful day, something on that order.  Try it.  Make a game out of it.  You will find that your attitude will begin to shift.