Paradigm Shifts

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Steven Covey offers a moving example in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as to how context can change our outlook. Covey was riding the subway when a man and his children boarded the car. The kids were loud and rowdy, throwing things and disturbing everyone in the car. The man seemed oblivious.

It was very disturbing and yet the man sitting next to me did nothing. It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive as to let children run wild like that do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, “Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?

The man lifted his gaze and said softly, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died. I don't know what to think and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either."

Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things differently, and because I saw things differently, I thought differently, I felt differently. My irritation vanished. I didn’t have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart was filled with the man’s pain. Feelings of sympathy and compassion flowed freely.

While this change of perspective could be momentary, it doesn't have to be. We are continually faced with decisions about how we will approach life's circumstances.

Remember that piece of music you heard that suddenly lifted your spirit and changed your whole outlook in the middle of the day? Do you remember that pleasant smell that took you back in time to fond memories? Remember when you exited a movie theater seeing an exhilarating film, inspired to change the world? Imagine putting your feet to those sentiments.

If change is possible, that puts the responsibility on our shoulders to make it happen. It's a thought that's downright scary—and motivating.

Stephen Goforth

Getting the Big Picture

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Without some grasp of the meaning of their relationship to the whole, it is not easy for individuals to retain a vivid sense of their own capacity to act as individuals, a sure sense of their own dignity and an awareness of their roles and responsibilities. They tend to accept the spectator role and to sink into passivity.

John Gardner, Self-Renewal

Inconvenient Conclusions

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Conspiracy theories may be deployed as a rhetorical tool to escape inconvenient conclusions. People selectively appeal to a conspiracy among scientists to explain away a scientific consensus when their political ideology compels them to do so—but not when the scientific consensus is of no relevance to their politics.

Stephan Lewandowsky & John Cook, The Conspiracy Theory Handbook

The creative spirit

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Children are naturally creative, playful, and experimental. If you ask me, we were the most human when we were young kids. We "worked" on our art. Sometimes for hours at a time without a break, because it was in us, though we did intellectualize it. As we got older, fears crept in, and doubts, and self-censoring, and over-thinking. The creative spirit is in us now, it’s who we are. We just need to look at the kids around us to be reminded of that. And whether you are 28 or 88 today, it’s never too late, because the child is still in you. 

Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen

Guilt v Shame Culture

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In a guilt culture you know you are good or bad by what your conscience feels. In a shame culture you know you are good or bad by what your community says about you, by whether it honors or excludes you. In a guilt culture people sometimes feel they do bad things; in a shame culture social exclusion makes people feel they are bad. 

David Brooks writing in the New York Times