What is Your Paradigm?

We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.Our lens defines how we see it. If we look through a lens of negativity and judgement, life will seem hard. If our lens is positivite and happy, success and love are more available to us.

What is your your paradigm?

Is your lens positive and uplifting, open to the possibility of change? Do you see beauty in the world or are you expecting the worse? Are you firm in your beliefs, even if they are limiting, reluctant to consider another point of view? 

If you can’t change your mind, you can’t change your life. I learned this this hard way. You can read a million self help books, go on twice as many courses, but if your belief about yourself and your life is negative, then longlasting and sustainable change is impossible. - Setting goals becomes repetitive and exhausting, because we always find our way back to reset. To our deeply ingrained perception of the world. That is, unless we become aware of it and change it. 

We’re born perfect, a blank canvas waiting to be fucked up by our childhood program. We rely on our parents to guide us through our first years, teaching us right from wrong, passing on their often fear based beliefs. We’re taught fear and caution in the guise of love and protection as our parents, unintentionally bequeath us with life long obstacles to overcome. 

We go to school and the belief systems of our teachers is passed on. The environment we live in, our social society, our church, if we have one and our friends and family. We inherit the beliefs of everyone, except ourselves and usually believe in something, because that’s what we’ve always done. 

Negative beliefs sound something like this: ‘I can’t do it. I start things, but never finish. I won’t succeed. I’m unlovable. I’m no good at that. My best years are behind me. Life sucks. Happiness doesn't exist.’ Sound familiar? Bombarding ourselves with limiting beliefs, we prevent ourselves from achieving our hopes and dreams. 

What if? Instead of deciding on something straight away, we made a shift and considered another possibility? - I can’t do this, then becomes I can do it. Instead of automatically dismissing an opportunity, we ask ourself why we belief what we do. Do we actually believe it or is it something we were told a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away and it stuck?

Observing how we talk about our children is great practice for shifting our paradigm. He’s stubborn like his father or she's a lazy teenager. He’s not good at maths or he’s shy. These are the beliefs we give to our kids and somewhere in their subconscious mind, that belief is stored. Shaking off labels (my next blog topic) can prove incredibly challenging for them and for us. 

There’s good news? For those completely enslaved by a certain way of thinking or a certain belief system? When you finally shift, it's powerful and has a deep impact on your life. To change your perception is to shift you paradigm. 

How do you do it? By observing your beliefs. If you believe in something, ask yourself why. If you don’t believe in something, ask yourself why. Question your believes, question your beliefs, question your bellief. Then you discover your truth.  It takes work. It takes commitment and it takes practice.

What do you practice in your life? If you practice worrying, you’ll worry about nothing. If you practice anger, you’ll get angry at the drop of a hat. If you practice fear, everything will scare you. Instead practice awareness, practice courage, observe your beliefs and be brave enough to change them. 

 

In his book 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,' Steven Covey gives a powerful excample of a paradigm shift. It goes like this......

One Sunday morning on a subway in New York. People were sitting quietly, some reading the paper, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It was calm, peaceful and serene. 

Suddenly a man and his children entered the subway car. The children were so loud and rambunctious that the whole climate changed. 

The man sat down next tom me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing people’s papers. It was very disturbing. And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing. 

It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe he could be so insensitve as to let his children run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all. It was easy to see that everyone else on the subway felt irritated too. So finally with what I felt was unusual patient and restraint, I turned to him and said, ‘sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?’

The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation for the first time and said softly, ‘oh you're right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died an hour ago. I don’t know what to think and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either.’

Can you imagine what I felt in that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things differently and because I saw differently, I thought differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently. My irritation vanished. Feeling of sympathy and compassion flowed freely. 

 

Now, that’s a paradigm shift.

In the image above do you see the old woman or the young woman?