Leaving The Rat Race To Run The Entrepreneur Race - a podcast by Ani Alexander

As you have probably noticed I have missed my schedule. That has happened only few times over the last 2 years… and in fact that’s exactly what I want to talk to you about in today’s solo episode.

So why did I drift away from my schedule and skipped last week? Probably you expect a serious excuse but I am not sure there is any.

The thing is… I have been going through lots of internal debate and spend a lot of time thinking about things and as a result I have partly lost my motivation, inspiration and drive.

Did anything special happen to trigger this? Well, not really. I simply went through yet another paradigm shift.

I came across the term paradigm shift ages ago back at the university. We had amazing communications professor, with who we went through Stephen Covey’s bestselling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The paradigm shift was described there by a powerful example. I will read it for you and those who don’t know what it is will immediate understand what I mean.

So here we go…

I remember a mini-paradigm shift I experienced one morning on a subway in New York. People were sitting quietly - some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm, peaceful scene.

Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway.  The children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly the whole climate changed.

The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing people's papers. It was very disturbing. And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing.

It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive as to let his children run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all. It was easy to see that everyone else on the subway felt irritated, too. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, "Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn't control them a little more?"

 The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation for the first time and said softly, "Oh, you're right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don't know what to think, and I guess they don't know how to handle it either."

Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things differently, and because I saw differently, I thought differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently. My irritation vanished. I didn't have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart was filled with the man's pain. Feelings sympathy and compassion flowed freely. "Your wife just died? Oh, I'm so sorry! Can you tell me about it? What can I do to help?" Everything changed in an instant.

Powerful example, isn’t it?

I guess the short version of explaining paradigm shift is the quote from Dr Wayne Dyer:

“When we change the way we look at things…..the things we look at change.”