Changing Our Paradigms
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Before we can make the leap from doing ‘what we’re told’ to ‘doing what we want’, we have to accept four ideas. That:
What we’re doing isn’t aligned with what we want to do
We don’t have to do what we’re doing
We can do something else
We should go do whatever that ‘something else’ is
There are beliefs, perspectives, points of view that hold us back across each of those four ideas. Some of those are the result of our education, some of them are the result of our practical experience. All of them, though, require our interpretation of those instances to form what we believe, and why we believe them.
In other words, we create (or accept) the specific paradigms that form the basis of how we think and, as a result, do what we do. We then assess every experience against those paradigms, which ultimately defines how fulfilled or happy we are.
If we’re consistently unhappy, or consistently unfulfilled, though, it’s worth asking ourselves, if the paradigms we’ve defined are correct or valid or appropriate. If we’re allowing ourselves to be held back by ideas (assumptions, beliefs) that no longer serve us.
More often than not, what’s holding us back isn’t anyone else. (I tend to believe most folks operate with positive intent but that intent is colored by their own interests and demands.) What’s holding us back is our own thought patterns and beliefs. The paradigms that we’ve defined for ourselves or that we’ve accepted over the years.
Paradigms that we need to shift, or break.
In its simplest form, this is the shift that pushes us to take on any change that propels us forward - from taking on that role we’ve always wanted to starting that venture we’ve turned over in our heads for years.
And it isn’t an easy thing to do. At it’s most basic level, it requires confronting and accepting the fact that while we may not control what happens to us, we can control how we react, what we think and what we believe. It requires us to take ownership for ourselves and not rely on someone or something else to “make it happen”. It requires us to stop making excuses.
Paradigms exist for a reason. We just need to define if they are the right ones for us and what we need to do about it.
