Author: Tristan Lee

Perhaps you are going through one of the most difficult times of your life right now, whether it’s financial, personal, or whatever. It is a problem and you need to solve it. Sometimes this requires a total change in our thinking.

When you have a deep problem and you can’t solve the problem, it could simply just mean your looking at it from the wrong perspective or wrong belief. A paradigm is the way you see the world from where you are standing. Your paradigm may be right and someone else’s paradigm was right, but you guys would probably disagree with each other saying that the other one was wrong, when in reality both of you guys are right in your own way.

When you have a paradigm shift, your initial ways of seeing things changes, sometimes even in a split second. You think differently, you feel differently, and you behave differently. However, many of us cling on to our current paradigms because we do not enjoy change, we don’t like to open up and change our way of thinking because it makes us uncomfortable, and instead let our pride blind us from seeing things from a different angle.

Moreover, we look for quick fixes such as a change in attitude or using positive thinking, when the real change is something a lot deeper within us.

Let’s take money for an example. It’s something that everybody can relate to and it effects everyone in some way, shape, or form.

Person A

Person A may view money from a standpoint that money is just what it is, the pieces of paper that hold value that we use everyday when wanting to buy something. Money is essential for us to live because we need it to buy food, shelter, clothes, and other miscellaneous things. But most importantly, we need money to survive.

This is how person A interprets money. Thus, I would expect this to be the typical person who works hard in school to get a degree, in order to get a good job and work their way up the ladder of the working social status, perhaps someday becoming the boss or CEO of a business or company.

Person B

Person B may view money from a standpoint that money is the most evil thing on earth, that money is nothing but debt – endless amounts of debt that we owe back to the federal reserve which is already in billions of trillions of dollars in debt and they are creating more debt for everybody by creating money out of thin air.

Not only is money debt, but it is the sole reason we have such a corrupt world in which only a few percentage of people on the earth live a rich lifestyle, controlling most of world’s wealth, while other people work for less than a two dollars a day and argue everyday over money.

This is how person B views money. I would expect this person to be someone who views money as pointless and hopes that one day the world will not even need to use money, trying their best to inform the world that we need a radical change, through clubs, books, internet, etc.

Person C

Person C may view money as nothing but value that society places on it. This means that money does not have to be a source that comes directly from a typical job, but as long as one can create value from thin air, he or she would be able to exchange it for money.

Knowing that money does not need to come from a job, I would see person C trying to create their own business. Instead of working hourly under someone, they would use that time instead to create something of value and do an instant sell throughout the entire world – the fastest way being the internet. While this is going on and he or she is getting a steady amount of income from it, they would then use this time to explore other ways to create more value, offering it to other people to receive “multiple” streams of income.

Each of these people interpret money differently because they somehow are conditioned throughout their entire lives to think the way they think. But what happens when each types of these people face a very difficult problem that needs to be changed, but they don’t know how?

For example, Person A is getting irritated that the amount of money they are making is not enough. They make about $50,000 a year, which is the typical 9-5 job, five days a week, with about 10 days of vacation per year. Is having a job the only way to make money?

What if a Person D came a long and say, “Hey $50,000 is chump change. You could making $1,000,000 a year easily.” How would Person A react to this? Probably doubtful or pessimistic of Person D’s claims because to Person A, there is such a big difference between the number 50,000 and the number 1,000,000 that it is just at the moment incomprehensible to him or her – it doesn’t make sense.

How would a person like person D, who has the ability to say to a hard working person that $50,000 per year is nothing, paradigm be like? What in the world would this person be thinking? How would they interpret money in relation to how much other people can make? There would be a big difference.

How about Person B? This is the person who interprets money as the root of all evil. To say the least, this person would be okay without having a job until they get to the point where they cannot survive and realize the money, no matter how much corrupt it can make people, is essential because it can be used to be exchange with things that help us survive at the most basic level.

Maybe homeless people, or at least some of them, are like this. I mean I used to live in an area where be at least a few homeless people on the streets every single day. In fact, my friend, was homeless for a while when his parents kicked him out because of religious issues and asked me if he could stay at my place for a while, until my roommate kicked him out. I asked him during this time, “Hey, I just don’t understand… homeless people go through so much effort begging, why don’t just get a job?”

He told me that some homeless people choose to live the life that they live, that it might even be insulting to them to get a job because of their beliefs, of their paradigms.

I’m not saying all people like person B are homeless. They probably find a way to get money somehow, but if Person B had a problem just surviving, this would be enough of a paradigm shift to say, “Okay, I don’t like money, but I am about to perish unless a drastic, radical change happens tomorrow, in a week, or in a month, which probably won’t happen. What do I need to do now? If I want to survive, I must find a way to get money.”

Finally, there is Person C, who I’d probably imagine drastically different working methods than person A and doesn’t think money is that evil such as person B; he just simply wants to get as much money as he can in the shortest amount of time possible, via something like creating their own business.

The problem person C is facing however, is that their business is taking 1 or 2 years to set up and they’ve barely made enough money to pay off rent. Although this person has a dream of living large, as everyday goes by in reality, it is a say that brings him or her further and further into debt and also is being heckled by an obnoxious apartment manager due to unpaid bills on time.

This person could probably go through a paradigm that being in continuous debt is okay – one day they will make it big or make it through – but then finding themselves handing over the keys to the apartment manager and getting kicked out. They might still continue on with their small business, but who knows what will happen to them next…

Or they can come to a sudden realization and say, “Hey, life sucks right now, but life, in the long term, it would be easier on me if I could get a part-time job, even though I do not believe in working for someone else, but it would at least help me pay off some of these stupid bills and give me a change to chase the dream of creating a successful business that I want to happen.”

The point is, whatever troubles in life we are having, sometimes it’s not enough to use a “personal change” such as methods that include positive thinking, being more determined, motivated, etc., because all these things don’t come from the inside, which is who you are. Bringing in external forces may take months, even years to change who you are and how you go about solving ridiculously hard problems you may be going through in life.

If you just change your paradigm, see things from different perspectives, change your thinking, and interpret the difficult situation at hand completely differently, you may find a sudden light bulb that goes on and gives you a solution you need to solve a particularly challenging problem. Write your thoughts down on a piece of paper or spend time thinking about it in a quiet place.

This doesn’t just go with money – that was just an example from above – but from any areas of troubles you are having in your life like trying to lose weight, having continuous arguments with friends or family, trying to have a good relationship with other people but having a hard time doing so, or having trouble finding happiness.

All it may require is a complete shift in your thinking, in the way you observe a situation, and how it can be observed completely different yet make complete sense at the same time. You may find that it may be better in some cases, and it may be worse in other case, but you need to be able to open up your mind first to the other possibilities and experiment in order to find those better cases, or you might be stuck in your own paradigm forever.

When you do find a better paradigm that is worth going to, the “shifting” part will obviously require you to do work that you might not like and may take a long time. But if thet change can help double, triple your income, lose more weight than you’ve ever expected, help you meet more people, maybe even meet the love of your life, live healthier, or at the very least, help you survive, would it be worth the trouble?

If it is, I have three words for you: go for it. Don’t fear a change in thinking because it’s uncomfortable, but because it will help you grow as a person. But all starts from inside and having the ability to see your situation in a completely different way.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/self-improvement-articles/paradigm-shifting-a-change-in-perspective-998512.html

About the Author

Tristan Lee is a writer who enjoys helping others with self-improvement and personal success. Read more of his self-improvement posts at his blog, http://www.tristanleesblog.com/.