#14) Paradigm Shifts

Hello and welcome back to "Always Be Better" with Mel Windham.

Today we will turn to the 7 Habits and discuss paradigms. To start off our discussion, I'd like to show you a picture.

Think about this person. How old is she? What is she wearing? How do you think she lives her life? Would you like to get to know her? I'll give you five seconds to think about it -- pause if you need any more time. [Pause] Okay -- we'll come back to this picture a little later. 

What is a paradigm? It's a way of looking at things. Each of us has different ways to look at life. We have a sense of how things should be, how people should behave, how we should treat each other, and so on. Some of us may have an overly optimistic outlook on life, and some of us may be more pessimistic.

Stephen Covey presents two paradigms as an example. Throughout the 1800s, a Character Ethic prevailed. Think of Benjamin Franklin. If you're a good person -- honest, hard-working, patient, modest, courageous, and so on, then you will do well in life, and people around you will also benefit. Perhaps you think of these people as do-gooders.

Then after World War I, a Personality Ethic arose. Think Dale Carnegie and practically any politician. If you are friendly, always smiling, having a positive attitude, developing personal skills, and always interacting with others, then you will do well, and so will the people you touch. I like to think of these people as smiling handshakers. I get a lot of this at work. Really -- a lot!

But from experience, you and I know deep down inside that both of these paradigms are somewhat hollow. Life is full of troubles and challenges, and it's not always possible to keep a happy face, and nobody can be a do-gooder all the time. We are all imperfect and make mistakes. While these two paradigms have good aspects, they seem to leave out a lot.

As an alternative, Covey suggests adopting a Principle-Centered Paradigm. It's a much more flexible way of viewing life. We can learn a slate of concepts and apply them accordingly as each situation dictates. He lists: fairness, integrity, honesty, human dignity, service, quality, excellence, potential, growth, patience, nurturance, encouragement. You may recognize a lot of the Character and Personality Ethics in there, but this is bigger than that -- it's learning to internalize all these concepts so that you become a sincerely good and effective person -- and then all that Character and Personality stuff will naturally happen.

Yes -- it does take time, and no matter how good we get, we can always be better. There is no "get rich" scheme to magically take us to success and happiness. But we are not powerless. There is a way to get there -- we just need to find it, and it's different for each of us individually.

The first step is to realize this -- as we struggle in life, or feel stuck, angry, or sad all the time, we're most likely using the wrong paradigm. This is where paradigm shifts come into play.

Often when we've been viewing things the wrong way, we learn something such that everything suddenly becomes much clearer. A "Eureka" moment, as I like to call them.

Consider a battleship captain on a dark stormy night who sees a light approaching on a collision course. 

The captain radios ahead: "Ship, alter your course 20 degrees or we're going to crash." 

The response: "No, I advise you to alter 20 degrees."

"Well, I'm a captain, and you need to yield."

"Well, I'm a lowly seaman, and you better yield."

"I'm a battleship!!"

"And I'm a lighthouse."

Can you imagine what the captain thought next?

Here's another story I've heard frequently. A father catches his son scratching up his car with a rock. He thinks, "What the heck? This car is expensive! What is he doing?" The father gets angry, spanks his son, yells at him, sends him to his room, and the boy cries all the way into the house. Then when the father turns around to survey the damage, he sees scratched on the door: HAPPY FATHER'S DAY.

I've found that paradigm shifts are often more subtle than these stories, but I love them all. They happen often. As I learn more things, life becomes clearer, and makes a lot more sense. I struggled with Einstein's Relativity until I attended a planetarium presentation that cleared up one small issue, and then everything came together. Just last week I learned something about a childhood friend that cleared up some of my memories. These shifts are everywhere, and we should embrace them.

Before we wrap up. Let's look at that woman's picture again. Remember what you saw? Take another look. Some of you may see a young woman wearing a necklace, looking away from us. Others may see an old hag looking toward us with one set of eyelashes poking out from behind her large nose. I'll give you five seconds to give you a chance to see what you didn't see before. Pause if you'd like more time.

As we progress through this video series, I invite you to have an open mind. Be willing to see things a different way. If you do, I promise that it will be a rewarding experience. I have ultimate faith in your potential to rise to this challenge. I have yet to meet an individual who is unable to do this. You can go ahead and give it a try over the next week. Look at the world around you. Can you think of different ways to look at everything? Do you see how you now view the world?

I promise many paradigm shifts in our future, and we'll have fun with it. Thank you for watching, and remember, we can "Always Be Better."