Change Your Paradigm, Change Your Life
Have you ever had one of those amazing moments when your world was turned upside down and everything you thought about something completely changed forever? I’m talking about a paradigm shift, (a bit like changing a belief system you have) and if we understand what this is, it makes it much easier to adapt to change.
When men began to sail completely around the globe it changed the paradigm that the earth was flat.
What is a Paradigm
So a paradigm is a perception, belief or opinion we have made our own, based on information and experiences we have had so far. We change a paradigm when we allow a change to take place in the way we perceive, do and reac to things. Paradigms may also be a part of our culture and imposed on us by society.
A paradigm acts as an information filter. What may be perfectly visible and obvious to one person’s paradigm, may be quite literally invisible to a person with a different paradigm.
Think of changing your paradigm as understanding something in a completely different way, or changing the way you function and live life, because the rules and boundaries have changed.
A guy called Baker describes it like this: ” A paradigm is a set of rules and regulations that defines boundaries and tells you what to do to be successful within those boundaries. A paradigm tells you that there is a game, what the game is, and how to play it successfully. A paradigm shift is to change to a new game, a new set of rules”.
Our Reaction to Changing our Paradigms
If you had been developing and applying a paradigm to your life for 20 years, and had gained security and comfort by being in that particular place, or set of rules, how would you feel if somebody came along and said ‘you can’t do it that way anymore’, or ‘you need to change the way you act, dress, do things etc’?
It is highly unlikely our response would be ‘oh thank you very much, I didn’t realise that. Quick let me change’.
Common replies to someone who suggests a paradigm shift are:
- Why that’s impossible.
- We don’t do things that way.
- It’s too radical a change.
- We’ve tried it before and it didn’t work.
- Who told you, you could change the rules.
- I’ve always been this way.
- People will laugh at me.
The more familiar and long held the paradigm, the more you will have invested yourself into it, and the greater the risk will feel to change.
Paradigm Pioneer or Settler
Are we paradigm pioneers or settlers?. It is the settler who is always calling out over the horizon, “is it safe out there now?”. The voice they hear is the pioneer saying “of course it’s safe out here”. That’s because the pioneers took the risk, went out early and often made it safe for those that follow.
After a while we begin to trust the pioneer’s new paradigm and we begin to play by the new rules.
We shift our paradigms when the old rules no longer work; when circumstances, situations, hurts, pain, attitudes bring us to the point of crisis where we are forced to change. We can choose to continue to play by the old rules and dig our toes in. But this would have consequences for us depending on what area of our life is affected e.g. an old paradigm around technology may well hinder your career if you choose not to be open to new technologies and ideas.
The other day I was speaking with someone who has periodic minor burnouts. Now he doesn’t believe that you can rewire your thinking and therefore resists any suggestion that he may need to change his thinking around certain rules he has about his employment. Sadly, until he changes his paradigm he will continue to have burnouts.
What to Do with Your Paradigms
Sue (name changed) had three people in the same week tell her that she was ‘hard work’. After the third time she realised that it was something she needed to explore. Perhaps this is why she was always struggling with her relationships. As we worked together, we began to see that she had a particular paradigm around pleasing people, and if her relationships were to change she was going to have to change a deeply embedded paradigm (or rule) that she had unconsciously set in place for her life.
- Ask your trusted friends to identify what your stubborn thought patterns are
- If they are having a negative impact on your life, get help to change them
- Be self aware, open to constructive criticism and teachable.
Go be the best pioneer you can be. Sail over the edge of your world and discover that it really is a much better place than where you have been.
Remember I am available for coaching by Skype, so where you are in the world doesn’t matter.
Be bold
Fiona
About Post Author
Hi Fiona,
It is 3.00 in the morning here and I am playing around with the blog. I started out tonight looking at wrtiers’ groups and found some good possibilities. I see in this blog you are talking about paradigms, thought, opinions we have that hold us captive. it is easy to block our own way with excuses, although the battle I have with depression is more an annoyance than an excuse because my sleep is disrupted most of the time. So, to solve this, I try and work at night when the world is asleep. Some how event hough I am a natural night owl, it doesn’t always sit right with me because often I need to be doing things during the day, phone calls, errands and so forth. I have lots of thoughts, ideas and opinnions but at the bottom of it all is a stop block I can’t shift and I need to because I need to earn some money. It is like it is so close I can almost reach out and touch it, taste it. I have the bones of the face book page and some ideas about what this might look like. So along with the face book page I had the idea that I could create a blog, but here is me the writer, thinking what one earth I am going to talk about out there that people would want to read, to be inspired or encouraged but then this is all stuff to be explored in the next few weeks as I take these ideas and mould them into an income and my dream of working from home.