This is the second on my series of articles which draw upon the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”
The Way We See the Problem Is the Problem
A father steps onto a busy metro-train with his children. The children are unruly: yelling, throwing things, grabbing the belongings of other passengers. All the while, the father says and does nothing to intervene. After a decent spell, the person sitting next to this father says: “sir, your children are disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you could control them”. The father lifts his head and replies: “I’m sorry, I guess I should do something. We came from the hospital where their mother just died. I don’t know what to think and I guess they can’t handle it either”.
Central to the book the 7-Habits of Highly Effective People is the idea of paradigm change. A paradigm is the way we see the world. Our wider perspective. How we assume things to be. Our model of reality and of ourselves. I might call it a schema.
Us humans tend to think we have a good grasp of objective reality, but much of what we assume to be objective is actually assumptions. This is well demonstrated by the story above, which is an account of an actual experience of Stephen Covey, the author of 7-Habits. Covey reported that once his perspective shifted on the unruly children, his emotions changed from feeling angry to feeling guilty and sad. He ended up comforting the father.
There are many everyday examples of micro-paradigm changes:
- A text message that appears rude that we later learn to be a typo
- A child appearing to be disrespectful to a parent, is in fact absent-minded due to school problems
Recently, in the Australian news, there was an interesting example of a paradigm shift. It was discovered that champion footballer/soccer-player, Sam Kerr had been charged with a racial abuse offense. Within a few days, more information came out: the person she was accused of abusing was a white male police officer.
Whatever your opinion of Kerr and the alleged abuse, it was interesting to observe how many people’s paradigm of Kerr changed: from champion, to villain, to champion (albeit a slightly flawed one).
Changing Inside-Out: What is in Your Centre?
When it comes to sportspeople or text messages or kids on trains, perspective shifts are trivial. Real paradigm shifts change when you see the world as fundamentally different to before. In Covey’s opinion, meaningful, whole-life success can only be achieved if one is living according to their principles. A principle-centred paradigm.
A principle-centred paradigm is one that assumes, as a central belief, that the cultivation of virtues such as patience, industry, integrity, fidelity and simplicity, will lead to holistic wellbeing and success. The principle-centred paradigm is an inside-out paradigm: change, effectiveness, improvement and happiness all some from oneself. Good things in life do not come from external things like loved-ones, luck, the government, etc.
This is a paradigm of radical responsibility. It assumes that everything important in your life, no matter if you are a prisoner or a king, is entirely within your responsibility. Exciting, liberating, but what a heavy burden!
Covey contrasts a Principle-Centred paradigm with several externally-centred paradigms. These include:
Spouse-Centredness: Being dependent for our self-worth on our spouse, leaving us angry and disappointed when the spouse doesn’t give us what we need.
Family-Centredness: Deriving self-worth from the family and from children’s wellbeing, achievements and emotions, leaving us vulnerable to over-react to difficulties in our children’s lives, and feel resentful towards unappreciative kids.
Work-Centredness: Derving identity a value from professional title and production, leading to risk of emotional collapse when job-loss occurs and a lack of self-development outside of work.
Principle-Centredness
When we strip away the external centres, what are we left with?
We are left with ourselves. Covey considers some common, but unhelpful, internal centres:
Pleasure-Centredness: Focus on instant gratification and good times at the expense of building a better future.
Self-Centredness: The most common centre. Prioritising one’s own wants needs over those of others, leading to a life of loneliness, broken relationships and mutual mistrust.
The only option left is principle-centredness.
When we are principle-centred, we accept responsibility for our own well-being and happiness. We trust in principles of right behaviour that have cropped up in every culture around the world. We are choosing to be:
- Pro-social, rather than selfish
- Wise, rather than foolish
- Patient, rather than impulsive
- Integral, rather than expedient
I very much like Covey’s principle-centred paradigm. My experience as a psychologist and as a human is that so many of the problems that we face derive from orienting ourselves on unstable or unhealthy centres. I truly believe that having a good life is mainly about being a good person.
And what if you’re not a good person?
Become one. Your character is the sum of your actions. The way to ensure long-term good actions, is to create healthy habits.