The Power of a Paradigm

The Power of a Paradigm

The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People embody many of the fundamental principles of human effectiveness.  These habits are basic; they are primary.  They represent the internalization of correct principles upon which enduring happiness and success are based.

But before we can really understand the seven habits, we need to understand paradigms and how to make a paradigm shift.

Both the character ethic and the personality affect our examples of social paradigms.  The word paradigm comes from the Greek.  It was originally a scientific term, and more commonly used today to mean a model, theory, perception, assumption, or frame of reference.

A simple way to understand paradigms is to see them as maps.  We know that maps are not the territory.  A map is simply an explanation of certain aspects of the territory.  A paradigm is an explanation or a model of something else.

Suppose you wanted to arrive at a specific location in downtown Manhattan.  A street map of the city would be a great help to you in reaching your destination.  But suppose you were given the wrong map.  Through a printing error, the map labeled New York was actually a map of Chicago.  Can you imagine the frustration, the ineffectiveness of trying to reach your destination?

You might work on your behavior – you could try harder, be more diligent, double your speed. But your efforts would only succeed in getting you to the wrong place faster.

You might work on your attitude – you could think more positively. You still wouldn’t get to the right place, but perhaps you wouldn’t care. Your attitude would be so positive, you’d be happy wherever you were.

The point is, you’d still be lost.   The fundamental problem has nothing to do with your behavior or your attitude.  It has everything to do with having a wrong map.

If you have the right map of New York, then diligence becomes important, and when you encounter frustrating obstacles along the way, then attitude can make a real difference.  But the first and most important requirement is the accuracy of the map.

Each of us has many, many maps in our head, which can be divided into two main categories: map of the way things are, or realities, and maps of the way things should be, or values.  We interpret everything we experience through these mental maps.  We seldom question their accuracy; we’re usually even unaware that we had them.  We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be.

Our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions.

We must keep in mind that two people can see the exact same thing, disagree, and yet both be right.  It’s not logical; it’s psychological.

Perception Demonstration

To try to change outward attitudes and behaviors does very little good in the long run if we fail to examine the basic paradigms from which those attitudes and behaviors flow.

This perception demonstration below shows how powerfully our paradigms affect the way we interact with other people. As clearly and objectively as we think we see things, we begin to realize that others see them differently from their own apparently equally clear and objective point of view. “Where we stand depends on where we sit.”

Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are – or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouth to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms.

When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them. But, as the demonstration shows, sincere, clearheaded people see things differently, each looking through the unique lens of experience.

The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perspective, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.

What Are You Looking At?

The Power of a Paradigm Shift

The term paradigm shift was introduced by Thomas Khuns in his highly influential landmark book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Khuns shows how almost every significant breakthrough in the field of scientific endeavor is first a break with tradition, with old ways of thinking, with old paradigms.

For Ptolemy, the great Egyptian astronomer, the earth was the center of universe.  But Copernicus  created a paradigm shift, and a great deal of resistance – and persecution – by placing the sun at the center of the universe.  Suddenly, everything took on a different interpretation.

The Newtonian model of physics was a clockwork paradigm and is still the basis for modern engineering.  But it was partial, incomplete.  The scientific world was revolutionized by the Einsteinian paradigm, the relativity paradigm, which had much higher predictive and explanatory value.

Not all paradigm shifts are in positive directions.  But whether they shift us in positive or negative directions, whether they are instantaneous or developmental, paradigm shifts move us from one way of seeing the world to another.  And those shifts create powerful change.  Our paradigms, correct or incorrect, are the source of our attitudes and behaviors, and ultimately our relationship with others.

We could spend weeks, months, even years laboring to change our attitudes and behaviors and not even begin to approach the phenomena of change that occurs spontaneously when we see things differently.

It becomes obvious that if we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors.  But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.

For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the route.  ~~Henry David Thoreau

We can only achieve quantum improvements in our lives as we quit hacking at the leaves of attitude and behavior and get to work on the root, the paradigms from which our attitudes and behaviors flow.

The Principal-Centered Paradigm

The following is a paradigm-shifting experience as told by Frank Koch in Proceedings, the magazine of the Naval Institute.

Two battleships assigned to a training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather off the

California coast for  several days.  As night fell, the captain noticed the patchy fog and decided to remain on the bridge.Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, “Light.  Bearing on the starboard bow”.

“Is it steady or moving astern?” the captain asked.

The lookout replied, “Steady, captain,” which meant the battleship was on a collision course with the other ship.

The captain called to the signalman, “Signal that ship. You are on a collision course.   Advise you alter course 20 degrees.”

Back came the answering signal, “Advisable that you change course 20 degrees.”

The captain said, “Send another message.  I am a senior captain. Change course 20 degrees.”

“I am a seaman second class,” came the reply, “Change your course at once.”

The Captain was furious.  He spat out, “Send, we are a battleship squadron.  Change your course 20 degrees.”

The flashing light replied, “I am a lighthouse.”

The squadron changed course.

The paradigm shift experienced by the captain – and by us as we read this account – puts the situation in a totally different light.  We can see a reality that is superseded by his limited perception – a reality that is as critical for us to understand in our daily lives as it is for the captain in the fog.

Principles are like lighthouses.  They are natural laws that cannot be broken.  As Cecil B deMille observed of the principles contained in his monumental movie, The Ten Commandments:

“It is impossible for us to break the law.  We can only break ourselves against the law.”