Observation Stating what you see, hear, touch or smell without the influence of your thoughts and perception.

Evaluation Our brains are really good at drawing conclusions, coming up with explanations and our thoughts produce judgements.These evaluations come from our internal beliefs, life experiences, and thought patterns. The same observation can lead to many different evaluations.

Example

Observation:- A woman is sitting alone in a café drinking tea.

Evaluation 1:- She looks lonely. It’s important to marry, or we might end up like her. Evaluation 2:- She looks so confident sitting alone — I could never do that. Evaluation 3:- She seems at peace with herself. I admire people who are comfortable being alone.

Depending on our personal history and thought patterns, the same woman may appear very different to different people. There are countless other thoughts that are possible here. The key thing to note is that the observation tells us about the lady, but the evaluation tells us about ourselves.

By separating observation from evaluation, we become more aware of which parts come from the external world and which are created by our minds.

I learnt about this concept in the book Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. It is one of the concepts which if you grasp deeply, you can see how our thinking influences our experience and perception of everything.