Paradigms and principles

Over the past fifty years, literature on success has been superficial. It described the image-building techniques, special quick-acting techniques - a kind of “social aspirin and patch” that were proposed to solve the most acute problems.

There are fundamental principles for an effective life, and true success and happiness can only be achieved by learning to follow these principles.

The seven skills of highly effective people include many of the fundamental principles of human effectiveness. These skills are fundamental; they are of primary importance. They represent a system of principles on which happiness and success are based.

However, before you master these seven skills, you need to understand what our own “paradigms” are and how the “paradigm shift” is implemented.

The paradigm can be imagined as a map of the area. It is clear that the map of the area is not the area itself. This is precisely the paradigm. This is a theory, explanation, or model of something. Our assumptions and our behavior flow from such assumptions. The way we perceive certain things becomes the source of how we think and how we act.

I remember the mini-paradigm shift that I experienced one Sunday morning in the New York subway. Passengers sat quietly in their seats - someone was reading the newspaper, someone was thinking about something of their own, someone, having covered his eyes, was resting. Everything around was quiet and calm.

Suddenly a man with children entered the carriage. The children screamed so loudly, so outrageously that the atmosphere in the carriage immediately changed. The man sank into the seat next to me and closed his eyes, obviously not paying attention to what was happening around. The children screamed, rushed back and forth, threw themselves at something, even clutched at the passenger newspapers. It was outrageous. However, the man sitting next to me did nothing.

I felt annoyed. It was hard to believe that you could be so insensitive as to allow your children to bully, without reacting to it in any way and pretending as if nothing was happening. It was easy to notice that all passengers of the car experienced the same irritation. In a word, in the end I turned to this man and said, as it seemed to me, unusually calm and restrained:

“Sir, listen, your children worry so many people!” Could you call them to order?

The man looked at me as if he had just woken up from a dream and did not understand what was happening, and said quietly: