Shift of the paradigm
‘Cutting the strings that pull us back’.

The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes. Marcel Proust

If we have to march forward “step by step”, we have to take off our foot from the previous step. To continue our development, those burdens from the past have to be shed, conflicts resolved, doubts eliminated.

Pushing out our perimeter fences, or better still, tearing them down, is the way to begin seeing world from a different perspective. It usually brings new insights and enlightenment and changes the scripts we may be living by. A shift in paradigms is the first step towards change. Changing one’s own paradigms and a whole mind set is the most difficult aspect of self improvement.

Gynaecologists started laparoscopic surgery, Surgeons took the baton and are doing the maximum number of surgeries by laparoscopic way, Urologists are catching up, Gastroenterologists have already removed appendices through the stomach-endoscopic way!

More often than not, we do not realize that our actions with others in most interpersonal situations are nothing but a reflection of our own “paradigms” i.e. a set of beliefs that we subconsciously create in our minds as we go through life’s experiences. In truth, significant progress happens only when the existing set of beliefs are challenged forcing us to give way to new ones… or in other words, when we experience a “paradigm shift”.

As Charles Handy, a British business philosopher puts it – “We cannot look at the future as a continuation of the past…the things that got you where you are, are seldom the things that keep you there”.

Paradigms represent the way our minds are conditioned to look at things, based on our past experiences, creating mental “blind spots” that refrain us to look at newer, lateral possibilities.

A paradigm shift happens when an old way of thinking gives way to a new one, in a rather revolutionary manner. More often than not, a paradigm shift is stimulated by an event, a sudden happening, a new reading or development that may all act as agents of “change”. We experience a paradigm shift when we go through an “Aha” experience, telling ourselves –“Why didn’t I see it this way before”?

Quantum leap in personal lives or in society can all be attributed to paradigm shifts. Be it relationships, professional progress or evolution of societies. In order to progress then, we must be aware that “the new” exists out there already. What we need to change is our paradigms and what we need to clear is our blind spots.

Switzerland had long been the world leader in watch production, when in late 1960s, it invented the first quartz watch prototype. In an astounding example of blind spots and failure to recognize the implication of their own development, they dismissed technology, which was quickly snapped by the Japanese. While, the Swiss continued to improve upon what they had been doing – further refining gears and springs and offering water proof and self winding watches, the Japanese took over the market and manufactured quartz watches. The Swiss that controlled 65% of the market collapsed to less than 10% within a period of 10 years and it took many more for them to recover. Continuous improvement hence, was no match
for the consequences of a Paradigm Shift.

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