Hi all
Your expressions around living standards of judgement are most interesting,
and very eruditely expressed.  I'm just going to contribute a few thoughts,
following on from Robyn's and Moira's input.  

I do think people care a lot more about their experience of whether we're
walking our talk than they do about what we actually say.  I think that is
particularly the case if we express our beliefs in jargon that people find
difficult to understand.  I know this is an academic community, but
occasionally I find the modes of expression in this community not conducive
to my understanding.  My preference, as a long-time adult educator, is to
try and put things in ways that people can 'click on to' quickly and easily,
and to comment on or criticise equally easily.  But I do recognise that
there is a time and place for 'more academic' modes of expression.  As Prof.
Sue Middleton (my chief supervisor) said to me, when I was arguing for a
style of expression in my PhD thesis that would be more accessible to some
of the people whom I hoped would read it, "This is being written for an
academic audience.  Write the popular novel next!" So, I'm not trying to
criticise the more complex aspects of some of the input on this list -
merely to point out that, for some, it makes it harder for us to understand
what your living standards of judgement may be, when couched in those terms.
And some of us have never met some of you face to face, so experience of
judging you by whether you're walking your talk is not an option.

I totally recognise Moira's point, too, about people sometimes picking up
some 'minor' aspects of our explanations, that seem to stick out for them,
although being minor for us.  I had a woman in a group I was teaching once,
try to sabotage totally what I was saying.  I recognised something had upset
her, so instead of responding defensively to what she was saying, I offered
her the opportunity to take the group through the material in her own way
for the next little while, and she did.  She did it brilliantly, too. After
the session, I had a quiet chat with her and asked her if I had done
something to upset her.  She said that the day before I'd used a
'throw-away' line, humorously, which she had taken in a completely different
way from what I'd intended, so she'd decided to have me on.  Once I was
prepared to cede power to her in class, in front of the others, she was
prepared to accept that there was a different interpretation possible for
what I had said the previous day.  So I guess we have to recognise that "the
message received is the message sent" as I think Marshall McLuhan expressed
it, and check carefully whether what we intended to say is what people
actually heard.  Makes the job of being an educator a weighty one, doesn't
it!

Enough from me.  I try to live out what I believe and profess, but don't
always get it right.  The important thing is to forgive ourselves, admit
fault if/when it is pointed out to us, and try again.  (An ancestor of mine,
Robert Bruce, after close observation of a spider in a cave, is reputed to
have said "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again", although my
father's version was "If at first you don't succeed, don't drink till you
see spiders"!)
Pai marire (peaceful thoughts)
Pip Bruce Ferguson