“Independent will is our
capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim
upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than
reacting based on emotion or circumstance.”_Stephen Covey
Success in practical life doesn’t
come from just learning what we do not know; it comes from doing what we know
and believe to be sound.
Ironically, most of us already know
what we need to get better results in many aspects of our lives. The real
challenge comes from getting ourselves to act upon our stock of knowledge,
especially in this age of information overload.
In my quest to search for answers
on this pervasive mystery of human experience, I discovered that to close the
gap between knowledge and useful activity, the thing to upgrade is the mental
program that is controlling most of our behaviors.
This mental program is what the renowned
author of the book, ‘You Were Born Rich,’
Bob Proctor calls ‘paradigm or a multitude of habits.’ Paradigm, which is made
of a mass of deep-rooted habits, is the invisible force that shapes our
behaviors, and by extension our results.
Habits are so important because they
have a dominant control on what we do—no matter what we know at the
intellectual level of consciousness. Therefore to move from knowing to doing, paradigm
is the thing we really need to change.
When we work on paradigms, we are not
just trying to do something marginally better. We are changing the whole mental
programs that control most of what we think, what we perceive and especially
what we do. In short, by changing our paradigms, we are changing the essence of
who we are.
As Stephen Covey wrote in his
great book, ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective
People’: “More essential than working on attitudes and behaviors is
examining the paradigms out of which those attitudes and behaviors flow.”
Furthermore, Proctor says that ‘paradigm
has almost exclusive control over our habitual behavior, and almost all our
behavior is habitual,’—in the long run.
To be clear, the evidence of this claim
is revealed in the fact that many people are mired by self-made afflictions (like
drug addiction, alcohol addiction, bulimia etc) that can be corrected by a
simple change of lifestyle, which they are either unwilling or unable to make.
Those kinds of people have been shackled
by the chains of their subnormal habits. Evidently, undisciplined folks are the
victims of their own habits while disciplined pantheons are the architects of
theirs.
Paradigm is the engine that drives us
all. And it can be either a blessing or a curse, depending on whether it is
predominantly wholesome or predominantly unwholesome. And because paradigms are
made up of ingrained habits, we operate by them on autopilot, whether we like
it or not.
Analytically, great paradigm is formed
by multitudes of good habits while average paradigm is formed by multitude of
average habits, and bad paradigm is formed by multitude of subnormal habits.
Great paradigm is the force that
is driving the people we most admire based on the quality of their
relationships, the excellence of their work and the value of their contributions.
Average and bad paradigms are the
forces behind the behaviors of everyone else. My intention on this work is to
help you refine your paradigm from suboptimal to optimal in every sense of the
word—optimal.
Paradigms are like programs
installed in us and we act on them with little or no conscious thought. Make no
mistake about it; suboptimal paradigms can put us on autopilot of mediocrity throughout
our lives—unless we make a decisive effort to change them.
For all your limiting bad habits
to change for good, you need to completely change your paradigms. Because
without deciding to change your paradigm, there will not be a lasting change in
your results. Without a radical change of paradigm, your dreams will always
remain as delusions: they will not come to pass.
The futurist and the bestselling
author of ‘Future Edge,’ Joel Arthur Barker has his take on our study. He said:
“To ignore the power of paradigms to influence your judgment is to put yourself
at significant risk when exploring the future. To be able to change your future
you have to be ready and able to change your paradigm.”
What It Takes to Create Better Paradigms
If you want to permanently move
from knowing to doing, you absolutely need to change your paradigm. Understanding
paradigms and creating vitality habits (by breaking down passivity ones) is the
real secret to enduring success.
To effect this change, you only
need to follow the advice of the great inventor, Buckminster Fuller who wisely advised
as follows: “In
order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the
problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”
In other words, to change a bad
habit, you don’t need to fix your attention on the disabling habit you want to change;
instead, you direct your attention towards an empowering habit you need to
install. Simply put, replace the sub-optimal habit by installing an optimal alternative,
and repeat the new behavior until the old one loses its grip over you.
If you want temporary results, you
can perhaps look for easy tips and short cuts. But if you want to make noteworthy,
long-term changes, paradigm is what you need to change. The only price is the
period of initial discomfort that any process of transformation always demands.
The moment we realize that habit
is the cornerstone of all self-improvement, we have the greatest leverage for personal
freedom at our disposal. Because when we effectively change our paradigms, we
are practically born anew.
And with new life comes new power;
the power to make amazing things happen in the world.
