Personal paradigms are the lenses through which we see the world, shaping our understanding of how we live in it. Paradigms are guidelines
for our behavior—what we think, feel, and live—that evolve into life patterns. They regulate what you mentally and emotionally hold onto. And many of us are grappling with problems we once could solve but no longer know can.
A personal paradigm is comprised of not only your belief system that has these issues within it but also your needs and goals. Combined, these create your success strategies for taking the actions that result in the outcomes of solving the issues.
There’s only one problem—it doesn’t work for you anymore, and your mindset is stuck—there’s no alternative.
What Creates a Paradigm?
Paradigms form from several places; your environment is one of them. Humans, by design, need protection, and herein lies the nature/nurture equation. The nurture part of this equation is powerful.
Paradigms are shaped by many years of experience and what our parents, teachers, friends, and the world have taught us. Because these teachings are so deeply rooted, it can be problematic for you to recognize when you’re stuck in a paradigm that no longer serves you. Even if someone calls it to your attention, you may deny it as it can be invisible and locked in place.
Your Responses from Hearing “I Want a Divorce” May Have Originated from Your Paradigm
Paradigms are reinforced throughout your lifetime; repetition is the most transparent and straightforward way. Maybe you grew up in a household where it was forbidden or frowned upon to divorce. From as far back as you can remember, no one in your family ever even considered it an option. All you heard and knew growing up was that when you marry, it’s forever.
The paradigm could also be repeated in your culture; for example, divorce is illegal in the Philippines and the Vatican. In the Islam faith, it is a last resort, and in Hinduism, it was forbidden until the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955, and like Catholicism, marriage is a sacrament. However, the latter doesn’t believe in divorce and considers it a sin.
Getting divorced is a failure; you’re a failure, and you don’t know how to get out of this problem.
Other Ways Paradigms are Reinforced
Repetition is the most obvious way a paradigm is reinforced, but there are other ways it happens, and confirmation bias is one of them. Staying with the idea that if you divorce, you’re a failure, you may have heard that through other sources, such as the media or data research.
Confirmation bias involves preferring information that confirms your beliefs (or biases). An example would be meeting two new people, one who is married and the other divorced. You would place greater importance on the
married woman and deem her as successful in life, and you view the divorced woman as a failure. High regard is placed on looking for evidence and interpreting information that supports this.
Paradigms are also reinforced by a preference to choose friends who agree with you and the desire for comfort. When there’s no conflict, you can relax and be at ease with the patterns you’ve taken on.
Along with the belief that you’re a failure if you get a divorce, you may also believe that everyone abandons or rejects you, life isn’t fair, you are nothing without a spouse, etc.
Paradigms are the lens through which you see the world and hold onto them because they work and they’re comfortable. Creating an alternative paradigm requires a shift in perspective, which may seem overwhelming to you or too much work.
“Paradigms are powerful because they create the lens through which we see the world.” ~ Steven Covey
If you’re still in the throes of chaos and feeling less than, you are not alone. I’ve been there, as have others before me, and others will continue after me. It’s painful, and it hurts—and you don’t want to feel it anymore. I know.
I also know that you must feel your feelings to heal. You see, I’ve learned something about them. Take anger, for example. You weren’t angry before you heard the words, “I want a divorce.” Well, maybe not that angry.
So this anger comes from nothingness, and it becomes something. That something is inside of you, and you hold onto it. And your resistance keeps it from moving forward. But that something doesn’t want to stay inside of you. It intends to complete its life cycle like everything else. But you don’t allow it to.
When you feel the anger fully and then let it go, you allow the anger to return to the nothingness it once was.
The life cycle of your anger is then complete.
This is true of every feeling you have, and although it’s simple, it’s not easy to do. I encourage you to do your best to allow the anger, grief, sadness, and feelings of betrayal and abandonment to complete their life cycles.
There is a way out.
It can be accomplished where you have profound and enduring transformation by employing the 7 Step Path to Reclaim Your Self-Esteem, which I will outline here. The primary goal of this type of coaching is to shift a deeply held personal paradigm marked by a limiting belief to a more expansive and effective one that opens up new opportunities to live a life fully and well.
What is a paradigm?
In the container I have set forth here, a personal paradigm is a set of beliefs, assumptions, theories, or points of view that shape each person’s choices. Your response, or its level, may be rooted in your paradigms, which are difficult to see. They exist in your subconscious, and you rarely examine them.
During the 7 Step Path to Reclaim Your Self-Esteem, together, we will create a paradigm map for you to explore and fill out. [See Figure A.] I will describe each step in the process for the following seven weeks so you can decide if it’s something you want to learn more about.
Figure A
Warning: There is no quick and easy fix, but I guarantee you’ll have a lasting transformation if you do the work.
The following steps briefly describe the process of what is entailed to create a new, glorious life for yourself.
Step One: Start with a problem or desire to change. What problem do you want to solve or the pattern you want to change? Why do you want to change it?
Step Two: Establish a transformational goal or vision. What is your purpose in solving the problem? What about life do you want to be different?
Step Three: Search and discover the underlying pattern. How did this pattern emerge for you, and how has it served you? How has it limited you?
Step Four: Own the pattern and the process of learning. Do you understand that you created this pattern consciously or unconsciously and that to change it will require you to own it fully? Do you recognize that you have to put yourself in the “driver’s seat” to change this pattern?
Step Five: Question the current paradigm and identify possible new paradigms. Let’s imagine an entirely different way of seeing and being that will fundamentally shift the pattern. What would it look like and feel like?
Step Six: Experiment to find a more expansive paradigm. Now that you see a different personal paradigm let’s learn how to practice and implement it.
Step Seven: Form new habits. Now that your new paradigm seems to be working let’s make it a deeply ingrained habit so that you don’t revert to the old paradigm.
A good transformation will take you to a different way of seeing and being—with possibilities that didn’t exist in your prior way of being. The journey of transformation, where you reclaim your self-esteem and more, takes time and courage.
I look forward to the possibility of creating magic with you one day as you follow along and see how the process unfolds.
To learn more, schedule your complimentary 1-hour coaching call today.
The revelation, that was at death’s doorstep,and a moment of clarity, led me to say the three most challenging words I ever uttered, “I need help!”
In and of itself, divorce is enough to bury someone deep in dark places. Couple that with addiction, and you have a recipe for disaster.
But after waving a white flag of surrender, I felt my fears begin to ebb. I knew there was a tough road ahead for me, but I also knew it was an improvement over my current circumstances.
Transformation is a process that takes time. Knowing I am not unlike many people in the world who want a quick and easy fix for their problems, I needed to practice being patient and living in the present moment, which was my starting point.
I consciously decided to do what I was directed to do, even if I didn’t want to. After all, my best thinking led to my actions, which gave me the undesirable outcome I found myself in. I needed to change that, and it wouldn’t happen overnight.
Following the steps to sobriety was first on my agenda; recovery from divorce came after. After nine months in recovery—the same amount of time I spent suffering from the throes of being divorced and relapsing—I had an epiphany.
My thoughts were changing; my behavior and actions were changing; I was changing!
Now I was ready to work on the forgiveness necessary for the healing caused by the divorce. I knew there was more to do; I didn’t quite yet know what, though.
It wasn’t until someone told me that my ex-husband was living with the woman with whom he had an affair that I felt the anger and humiliated pierce my heart like an invisible dagger. I wanted to exact revenge, but knew to do so would do me more harm than good. So I did what I thought I couldn’t do—ask God to bestow upon him—and her—all the blessings that I had been given. I did this every morning and night for two straight weeks.
The resentment began to lift. It was a sign I was headed in the right direction.
I wanted more healing now that I had the foundational blocks, so I started to go beyond the 12 Steps. I became interested in raising my awareness and what miracals can happen when you shift your perception. It was extremely intriguing and I began to further my inner journey of healing.
Still saddled with the feeling of being victimized, not only
physically and emotionally, but financially by my ex, I wanted to let that go and forgive him. But first, I had to forgive myself, which I thought I had done. Not so fast. There was so much more to excavate and uncover.
After a year or so of self-discovery, I had found the gift of forgiveness. It’s not what you would call traditional forgiveness, where someone does something wrong and you forgove for the sake of forgiving. No, that wasn’t what I found. I acquired something much deeper and meaningful; two souls who were contracted in life for one to teach the other a lesson. This is called radical forgiveness.
The gift of my husband’s infidelity, divorce request, and me relapsing after 17 years was one where I healed from childhood wounds and trauma I never knew existed, discovered my true purpose in life and became the person I am today—who I love!
The words feel like a punch to my solar plexus, knocking the wind and life force out of me. I can’t feel myself breathe, and the pain in my jaw is visceral. Fear grips every inch of my body, like a vise holding my guts. As soon as I can feel my breath again, I realize everything in my life is slipping away; I’m slipping away.
I can taste the saltiness of tears trickling down my cheeks as the silence is deafening. When I ask my husband, “What did I do?‘ repeatedly, I hear the echo of my pleas. Life as I knew it is ending,
and the agony of rejection and abandonment rips through my heart; as each second passes, I feel it being torn apart, bit by bit, into tiny little pieces.
Though the energy in the air is acute and his decision firm, I don’t want to believe my husband is filing for divorce, and I’ll do anything to stop him. As he stood to leave the room, I fell to my knees in a last act of desperation and grabbed his pant leg, sobbing, “You promised you’d never leave me!”
He continues to walk away devoid of any emotion, dragging me until I let go and collapse into a heap of nothingness and humiliation on the floor. I’m an empty shell, physically present but barren of any inner essence.
My marriage is ending; it’s over, finished, done. And I’m ending, too. There’s no way out for me; there’s nowhere to go, there’s nowhere to turn.
“What do I do now?”
I returned to a familiar behavior pattern—forcing the paralyzing feelings of abandonment and rejection down, bottling them up, and returning to the “look good” little girl I know so well. I shut down emotionally. If I don’t feel, I can’t be hurt anymore. Shutting down also protected me from feeling bad about myself—that I’m a failure.
I go on dates, drink wine, and maybe even do a little cocaine. It numbs my pain and the shame I had
about my divorce and self-loathing. I isolated myself from family and friends because of my increased drinking and because I was humiliated and ashamed and didn’t want them to know my torment or the lonely world I lived in.
My life continued to spiral downward for the next nine months, and just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I received the divorce decree. I fell into deep despair and had no memory for the following two weeks. It wasn’t until I visited a friend after having my locks changed and passed out that I knew I had hit rock bottom. I woke up the next day and realized I had left my two dogs all day and night without any food, water, or way to relieve themselves. I was a monster!
I hit rock bottom and despised who I had become. In less than nine months, the person I thought died when I heard those four knife-life words was literally at death’s doorstep.
When explaining why you didn’t tell a friend what you reallythought about something personal to them, have you ever said: “I didn’t want to hurt their feelings?” I’m sure, like most people, you have at one point in your life, and perhaps you still do. I want to be honest with you:
YOU CAN’T HURT SOMEONE ELSE’S FEELINGS!
I will tell you why. It’s because you’re a People Pleaser, and the Saboteurin you thinks it’s better to save someone else from feeling bad than for you to tell them the truth. But your AccompliceSaboteur, the Pleaser, is lying to you, and that is its job. And, since this paradigm formed when you were a young child, it may be locked into place and even invisible to you.
People with this pattern may have created it as a ‘success’ strategy. You may have grown up hearing, “You’re badif you hurt someone’s feelings.” Another similar, usually unspoken rule is “Never hurt someone’s feeling!” It implies (and you take on the belief), “You are responsible for other people’s feelings and comfort.”
That’s a huge load to take on as a child and into adulthood.
I would suggest a healthier belief and rule: “You are responsible for your own behavior, feelings, and comfort.” And as a co-dependant-no-more, I have found that honesty truly is the best policy. I have learned that I am responsible for my feelings and not for other people’s. I am responsible for telling them the truth; how they deal with what I tell them is their responsibility.
Here’s an example that is more common than not: You’re in a relationship, and you want to break it off, and the problem is you don’t want to hurt the
other person’s feelings. So you don’t tell them, perhaps hoping they get the “hint.” I can tell you from personal experience the longer you are silent, the more pain you’ll wind up inflicting on the other person.
WHY? HOW?
Honesty is the best policy.
If the other person wants a more intense relationship or to continue the relationship, and you don’t, you need to be clear and honest about what you do or don’t want. You can tell the person what they can expect from you—ending the relationship or cooling it down—if that is what you want to do. How the person deals with it is their issue.Whether or not we tell the person is ours.
The longer you put off telling someone the truth, the more painful it is to them. Ask yourself, “Did I do that out of “kindness” to spare the person’s feelings?” or was it to avoid guilt from the childhood belief that you “never hurt another person’s feelings?”
If you feel a twitch, pinch, or stirring in your gut, you know the answer—and the truth.
Schedule your complimentary 60-minute coaching session now!
Have you ever reacted to people or situations in a not-so-nice manner and wished you could take it back?
Do you judge yourself, others, or circumstances?
Do you self-sabotage unconsciously?
Like most people, you answered yes to at least one of the above questions, which means there may be more room for more success and happiness in your life.
And, there is a solution to that problem! It’s called Mental Fitness, and there’s a program for it that will give you the outcome you desire. I encourage you to check out the 2-minute video below.
Mental fitness is the ability to face life’s challenges with a positive mindset
rather than a negative one. As the video explains, you can increase your ability to have a more optimistic attitude through a 6-week program to rewire the brain’s neural pathways through a process called neuroplasticity. You’ll form new habits through consistent daily practice.
There are 10 Saboteurs, including the Judge, who is the master along with 9 Accomplices and 5 Sage Powers. Your Saboteurs turn your greatest strengths into your most significant weaknesses by abusing or overusing them.
For example, the Pleaser abuses/overuses empathy. Their natural strength is that they are deeply empathic people. Empathy is a significant power when used by the Sage. But when that power is overused, it becomes the Pleaser.
Or take the Stickler, who overuses or abuses being orderly and organized. When used by the Sage, organization and being orderly is a strength that is used to serve their families and the world.
I encourage you to schedule your complimentary presentation on how the Mental Fitness Program can change the trajectory of your life and create more success and happiness for you.
The Mental Fitness program helped me become more empathetic, curious, creative, clear-headed, and laser-focused when I needed to take action. I can face any challenge in front of me with a more positive mindset and turn it into a gift and opportunity. You will be able to as well.
Make the move. Schedule your presentation—a new life is waiting for you!
That something is inside of you, and you hold onto it. And your resistance keeps it from moving forward. But that something doesn’t want to stay inside of you. It intends to complete its life cycle like everything else. But you don’t allow it to.
and wished you could take it back?
