Book 94 - A Year of Magical Learning (Top 5 - Five Part Reflection)

Reflection Title – The Power of a Paradigm Shift

Book – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey (2/5)

Book Description: In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity--principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.

Reflection:

The author spends a lot of time in the first part of The 7 Habits discussing the importance of paradigms, or the mental models and unique ways that each of us view the world around us. Being open to seeing the world through each other’s paradigms is critical to effective communication. He uses the analogy of our paradigms being like a map. You can’t get to the same place on a map if you are looking at different maps. That all sounded great in theory to me as I read this book in February of 2020, but I didn’t really get it sadly.

That would all change in late April of 2020…

The epic ordeal of extubating our daughter from the ventilator, and watching my wife hold her throughout the night until she left us was something I will never be able to describe adequately with words. When the whole thing finally ended, it was like 6am in the morning and we had nothing left in us as we drove home from the hospital.

As we woke up a few hours later, my wife and I were like walking zombies. Life felt meaningless and almost unbearable. However, in an effort to try and honor our daughter, we gathered all of our strength to get out of the house later that day to try and take a walk together, talk about our daughter, and do anything we could to just keep moving forward.

This particular day, April 22, 2020, also just happened to be one of the most beautiful days in the early spring here in the Midwest. It was one of those days you wait all winter to come to finally get out of the house and enjoy the sunshine and warmth. Naturally, all of our neighbors seemed to be out and about walking around with their families and enjoying this perfect spring day. They all had smiles on their faces as walked down the street with a pep in their step toward the park a few blocks away from our house.

For my wife and I, this day couldn’t of have felt more different. As we passed neighbor after neighbor, she was uncontrollable sobbing the entire walk as we thought about our daughter. I was walking next to her silent, staring at the ground, and thinking about all we had just lost only a few hours before this walk.

Every once in a while, I would look up as we passed neighbor after neighbor and feel the stares coming from them wondering what the hell was going on? I'm sure they were thinking I had to be this awful person and a terrible husband. I had my wife cry and then I was doing nothing about it other than silently walking next to her as she was suffering.

That is exactly what I would have thought as well when viewing my world through my old paradigms. The truth was that we were in immense pain and the act of even getting out of our house that day felt like a herculean effort. We were in a totally different world than my neighbors walking 5 feet away. This is a thought I don’t think I could have ever imagined before this experience in my life.

That moment changed the way I view the world and the people around me in a lot of ways. It made me wonder how many people I’d passed in my own life going through something similar and assumed the worst. It made me sad to think about all the times that I could have stopped and tried to make a real connection with someone else had a been brave enough to just ask them, “Would you like to Talk About It…I’m here to Listen”.

Everyone has something going and we shouldn't jump to conclusions or make assumptions; rather, we should jump in and ask if they want to share their stories and offer to help if we can. Shifting paradigms brings connection, which is what this is all about at the end of the day. I finally get it.

Question: What are the most powerful paradigm shifting moments of your life?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

YOML Bookstore - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey