You can gauge whether intentions and results are skillful or not. You can't gauge how good or bad a person you are, if you try it gets in the way.

"When the Buddha was teaching Rahula how to look at his actions, at his words, at his deeds, the point was that he should try to purify the thoughts, the words, and the deeds. He wasn’t focused on making himself a better person; the point was to learn how to respond to situations in a more skillful way. That’s something you can evaluate, something you can learn from. If you make a mistake, you learn from the mistake and learn how not to repeat that mistake. If you do something well, remember that, take joy in that, and keep on training.

In other words, when you look at your actions, don’t make them a gauge of how good a person you are. That’s where the fangs begin, and then they start you thinking about, “Well, am I better than that other person over there? Do they do a better job? Are they more generous? Are they more virtuous? Are they better meditators? Am I better than they are?” However you answer those questions, that kind of thinking has fangs because it really obscures what you’ve actually done and what actually can be done to improve your habits, or improve that particular action the next time that particular situation comes around. That’s what the real issue is. Everything the Buddha teaches gets analyzed down into actions, intentions and their results. The intention you can gauge as to whether it’s skillful or not, the results you can gauge as to whether they are skillful or not. What kind of person you are, how good or bad you are, that’s not anything you can gauge at all. If you try to do it, it really gets in the way.

So your duty here is to look at your intentions, and then to see how well those intentions play out when you act on them. And learn how to judge the results. Look at things simply in terms of cause and effect, and measure the effects in terms of whether they’re harmful or not, whether they lead to happiness or whether they lead to stress and suffering."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Thoughts with Fangs"

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