I often think about different behaviors of people in identical situations and I could never understand until I went through Human behavioral lessons from Prof. Stephen R. Covey. Basically, all people do behave in SEE-DO-GET pattern, it means what people get depend on what they do and what they do depends on how they see the world. That very ‘see’ describes people mental images inside mind covered by brain and are called ‘Paradigms’, intentionally, I discover causes of people

Paradigms are so powerful to change, title image.

doing different things in same situations. Every individual behaves and think because of their paradigms, what the meanings this person has defined in their mind. Usually, paradigms are build from childhood and throughout the conscious life. Greater the degree of maturity inside the brain of a person to understand the events and people behaviors, mature and reality based paradigms will be. I am not teaching you psychology lessons but only general understanding which will help you reshape your personal and professional life if you are looking for any turn or solution or break through. People perform actions(play roles) at home , office and in society, all depends on what and which thinking patterns they have in their minds within which they associate good or bad meanings and it all makes their personality. For example, if a newly hired employee could have meanings in the mind about supervisor as typical ‘Boss’ who orders and never listen ‘No’ from subordinates, then it might make employee insecure and suppressed. Because of past bad experiences or negative images about a ‘boss’ usually come from media or society throughout life, hence this thinking pattern will always stay walls between boss and that very employee.  These walls can never be laid down unless employees start to work on their paradigms. In same manner, when supervisors treat their employees as machines and never allow to think and use their own initiative will and give freedom to them, Boss has also wrong paradigms about their assistants or secretaries or subordinates. Because higher position holders in an organization may think that what employee are nothing just ‘a body to follow, obey and act’. It’s very traditional attitude and belongs to earlier Industrial mind-set. So a typical wall, between not only boss and employee but also all people, would become bigger and distant. Dr. Stephen R. Covey says in his book The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness:

“If you want to make minor, incremental changes and improvements, work on practices, behavior or attitude. But if you want to make significant, quantum improvement, work on paradigms.”

In perspective of teachings of Dr. Stephen R. Covey, this current information or knowledge worker age have brought the new set of paradigms and tool-sets to get real success.  Because the old pattern of thinking has been replaced with new paradigms. earlier, a boss used to perceive any change in work or function as ‘problem’ but a leadership-style of paradigm does not see any change as the problem but only ‘opportunities’ to exercise creative energy and solution of many other unseen problems.

Throughout the history of mankind’s technology and ideas, old technological things and ideas were always replaced by new meanings and interpretations of phenomenal of events, things, and people. New knowledge(s) and sciences are emerging just because of change of thinking(s), perceptions and paradigms.

Einstein once told:

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

Childhood experiences, misguidance, immaturity, and illiteracy are among main causes to have weak, unclear and wrong paradigms. We need to understand what we have experience in our personal and professional life, are just our own experience(s) which may be wrongly perceived and misconceived. Anyways, people still rely on their very thoughts. They do not even try to measure and evaluate it. People think that their ideas and definitions about people, things and events are very right and ‘do not try to disturb it’, excuse me! They assume it as their superiority over others. The culture of ego and arrogance may be active. Now question is that how people can know about the correctness of their paradigms. It is so difficult for people to identify and work on it, due to many mental and societal forces. However, I believe if people start to believe in ‘power of principles and natural laws’; that is the whole universe is governed by certain principles and laws and never things can happen beyond it, afterward people will try to guide their spirit and mind accurately, I believe. For example, to get money and material things are the real source of satisfaction and an individual’s social needs, are very common paradigms of people and they associate their happiness with it. But on the other hand, if we evaluate this notion of the principle of love and real meanings of life than this assumption of getting materials seems very weak and immature. Because true love and great ever-lasting inner satisfaction can only be achieved with unconditional love and attainment of material for the spirit of contribution and virtues only.

In multicultural places, people fight over racial and linguistics issues, and these are also mental images which they have about each other. Black man looks at the white man with prejudice because a black man may perceive them as arrogant. In opposite, a white man considers a black man as dirty, ill-mannered and ill-literate. When this attitude is multiplied by many people, community conflicts occur and so on. Similarly, an English man, sometimes, does not respect a Dutch because of ‘Nazis’ and German blame English because of their imperial colonialist approach and it goes on. I think that all world’s issues of differences get worse because of flaws in paradigms which they have associated with each other. It is true that all white, and black skin colors are not mattered of superiority but their strengths. Similarly, languages should not be the source of superiority but only their unique means of communication. I strongly believe that educator and researcher need to publish stuff for their nation in formally and informally about those wrong attitudes which transfer generation to generation is the result of inheriting paradigms.

People who drive their lives with positive thinking do construct their mental images with principles, systematic academic research, studies and reviewing sacred literature. We observe a number of people have the vision, passionate, disciplined in their physical life and with the conscience have always been proved quality thoughts and creative actions because there they have now sense to think and work accordingly and they have also the power to do against social mirrors. It is their constructed paradigms who fuel them enough to reject the path of mediocrity. Whereas principle based rightly guided paradigms leads leaders to the path of greatness. It is need of age. We need to self-determined our paradigms and throw away all prejudices and uncorrected patterns of thinking, the reason why a man is not the product of past, any racial agenda or genetic disease.